8
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 w A„.,„ 5w. f^.^,^^„^^. ii^u^^s^,: c ■
 
 THE 
 
 SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 ^/
 
 THE 
 
 SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON: 
 
 % Stora. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "after BREAKFAST," "DUTCH PICTURES," &C., &C. 
 
 NEW EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 TINSLET BEOTHEES, 18, CATHEEINE ST., STEAND 
 
 1864. 
 
 [The right of Translation is reserved.]
 
 LONDON : 
 BEAIEUaV AKD LVASS, PRIKTERS, WnirEFRIARS.
 
 PR 
 
 5: 
 
 TO 
 
 EDMUND YATES, 
 
 IX MEMORY OF A VERY LOXG AND CLOSE FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 WHICH 
 
 (as a rational alliance BETWEEN T^VO MEN AVIIO HAVE KNOVrN KiCH 
 OTHER, AND WORKED TOGETHER FOR Y'EAKs) 
 
 IS NOT LIKELY TO BE AFFECTED 
 
 EY ANY LITERARY JEALOUSIES, ANY LITERARY HATREDS, OR 
 
 ANY LITERARY CLIQITE WHATSOEVER, 
 
 IS MOST CORDIALLY AND SINCERELY DEDICATED. 
 
 1524231
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 A Book without a Preface has, ere now, been likened to a 
 Palace without a facade ; but I am afraid that in too many 
 instances the prefatory observations which authors think 
 themselves called upon to make, more closely resemble that 
 cumbrous attic story added, by an after thought, to the 
 Mansion House, and which enabled the architect to spoil an 
 originally excellent edifice. As, however, the postulate of 
 excellence as regards this work may be extremely question- 
 able, I do not think that a brief exordium is calculated to 
 make it much better or much worse. The only tribulation 
 it has caused me, has been in the endeavour to make it 
 serve some useful purpose. For, by this time, I should 
 imagine those who peruse novels must have grown somewhat 
 tired of being called " courteous readers " — of being grinned 
 and simpered at, and tickled, and flattered, and cajoled by a 
 person they never saw, and whom most probably they do 
 not care to see. How do I know that the reader of these 
 lines is " courteous " ? He may be Ursa Major for aught I 
 can tell, and be grumbling and growling fiercely because the 
 tale does not finish to his liking. Why should I endeavour 
 to conciliate some unknown reader, whose favour can do me
 
 viii p:M::i'ACt:. 
 
 no good, and ^vhose displeasure no harm ? If the public 
 don't approve of the show, they need not patronise it. 
 There are other ways, thank Goodness, of getting a liveli- 
 hood, besides dabbling in literature. There are shoes to 
 mend and stones to crack ; and, bearing this in mind, I can 
 afford to dispense with the deprecator}'' or complimentary 
 preface, and to brand it as useless and absurd. 
 
 I have something, however, to say ; and it could not be 
 said in a better place than this. Tlie title of " The Seven 
 Sons of Mammon " may be regarded b}' some persons as a 
 misnomer, and others may assume that I have failed in 
 carrying out the plan I originally proposed to myself. I 
 beg to state, that, in commencing the first chapter, I knew 
 perfecth^ well what the last one was to be about ; and that I 
 no more contemiDlated giving a distinct biograj^hy of each 
 Son of Mammon than of dancing on the tight rope and 
 cooking an omelette in medio. You see that, had each of 
 the Seven Sons an equal space apportioned to him, this 
 work had need to be in six volumes instead of one ; 
 and I am afraid that the modern reading public is not 
 inclined to tolerate works of the dimensions of the " Grand 
 Cyrus," or even of " Clarissa Harlowe." "Whether there is 
 to be a sequel to what I have alread}^ given — whether any 
 more of Mammon or his Sons is to be heard at a future 
 period, must depend on the inclination of the public. If 
 they cry " Hold — enough ! " I shall stay my hand ; if they 
 are anxious for additional particulars, they shall have them. 
 C'est a jyrendre ou d laisser. 1 have designed my little 
 Human Comedy on the model of an American table d'hote, 
 and the guests may drop in as they choose, eat their fiU, go 
 away, or come back again as the humour takes them. How
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 many incarnations, if you please, liacl Balzac's Vautrin ? 
 How many times, and in liow many novels, does Mr. 
 Cooper's Natty Bumppo tm-n i;p ; and wlio would ever 
 grow tired of the Marquis of Steyne, were lie met with 
 twenty times in Mr. Thackeray's fictions? You may object 
 that my characters are dull and stupid and uninteresting. 
 That is, again, a matter of opinion. 
 
 With respect to the reception this novel may meet with 
 from professional critics, I am indifferent. Of course, for 
 my Publisher's sake, I should wish it to be lauded to the 
 skies ; but so far as I am personally concerned, criticism, 
 hostile or amicable, is a matter of no moment whatsoever. 
 Did I earn my bread by writing novels, or did I look to 
 booksellers for patronage, the praise or the condemnation 
 of a new work might make or break me ; — were I young, or 
 hopeful, or ambitious, I might be overjoyed or driven to 
 despair by eulogy or blame. But I have reviewed too many 
 books in my time, and knowTi too many reviewers, to care 
 much about such things. I have found that slander has not 
 diminished my income, and that the lies that have been told 
 about me have not injured my digestion ; and although it is 
 a very nice thing to be a popular author, and a very terrible 
 one to be castigated as a dullard and an ignoramus by critics, 
 I have come to be of the opinion of Candide " qiiil faut 
 cultiver son jardin," and that, so long as a man goes on 
 cultivating his cabbages in a quiet laborious manner, and 
 earning his daily bread by the sweat of his brow, and thank- 
 ing God for it, he need not trouble himself in any great 
 degree about the applause or censure of the world. There- 
 fore, my intimate enemies, or my inimical friends, if you 
 feel inclined for the attack, come on. Gentlemen of the
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 Guard, fire first. I have, myself, a facult}'- for sound hearty- 
 abuse, and if you choose to brawl at me over the hedge, I 
 shall be very happy to look up from my spade -husbandry, 
 and return half a dozen good set terms of invective for 
 every six you may be pleased to favour me with. 
 
 GEOEGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 
 
 Uptok CotHRT, Bucks, 
 
 December, 1861.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. WiLVT CAME OUT OF A COUKT IN THE CiTY ... 1 
 
 II. The Twenty-seventh of December . . . . II 
 
 III. Retukn of the First-born ...... 22 
 
 IV. La Dame au Premier - 30 
 
 V. On a Field, or ; a Cross, S.vble 49 
 
 VI. "Eesurgam" GO 
 
 VII. Mrs. Army'tage is as much at Home as ever . . 70 
 
 VIII. Shepherd and Sheep 93 
 
 IX. A Lay Brother 106 
 
 X. An Exceedingly Vulgar Person . . . . 115 
 
 XI. In which the Curate goes to London . . . 129 
 
 XII. No Science to Mr. Sims is a Mystery . . . 148 
 
 XIII. Embarrassments of a Rich Young Man . . .156 
 
 XIV. Mrs. Aemy'tage's Impulse 172 
 
 XV. QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CuSTODES ? 190 
 
 XVL Mrs. C^sae, Donkin 201 
 
 XVI T. The Sexagenarians 212 
 
 XVIII. Eve of the Deluge 235 
 
 XIX. Down among the Bad Men 243 
 
 XX. Sister Marie des Douleurs ..... 258 
 
 XXI. Humble Pie 266 
 
 XXIT. Wom.\n's Work 289
 
 XU CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XXIII. A Max wearing his Heart upox his Slee^t: . . 300 
 
 XXIV. A Max -wearixg his Heart tpox his Sleeve . 314 
 XXV. Nemesis ix Plaix Clothes . . . . . .322 
 
 XXVI. The Race 333 
 
 XXVII. After the Race . .339 
 
 XXVIII. Caught 354 
 
 XXIX. What People said ix the City 376 
 
 XXX. The Feet of Clay 3S3 
 
 XXXI. At the West Extd 391 
 
 XXXII. The Agoxy of Florexce Armytage : Stage the First 405 
 
 XXXIII. Time works Woxdees 426 
 
 XXXIV. Upwards axt> Dowxwards to ax Exd . . . 44S 
 XXXV. The Agoxy of Florexce Ariiytage : Stage the Last 454
 
 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHAT CAME OUT OF A COTJET IJT THE CITY. 
 
 "Gold is a chimera," I beard a man sing in the opera of 
 " Eobert le Diable." Uorestune chimere. Gold a chimera! Is 
 it ? Ask Sir Jasper Goldthorpe. 
 
 He was the richest man on 'Change. The richest man in the 
 Bank Parlour. The richest man iu the East India Directory. 
 The richest man at innumerable Boards, whose members sat and 
 coined money out of green baize. He was the richest man in 
 that Square full of palaces, near to where stood an ugly monument 
 that poor rogues used to be suspended from, hard by the Edge- 
 ware Eoad. He was the richest man in the county where he had 
 his estate and his "place," and of which he was High Sheriff. 
 When be went down for a week to Brighton, his riches awed the 
 wealthiest stockbrokers and the grandest members of the fast- 
 decreasing class of nabobs. And Kothschilds and Baring ? and 
 the Amsterdam Hopes ? and the Hamburg Heines ? Pshaw ! 
 Pshaw ! Sir Jasper Goldthorpe was deemed to be richer than all 
 these, for he was alone on his throne of gold. He had no part- 
 ners. Mammon would not even let one of his sons come into the 
 firm. No shares were to be purchased in the house of Goldthorpe 
 and Co. The Co. was a myth. Sir Jasper was the Co. — himself 
 and company. He had no fears that the Antwerp house would 
 warn him against undue speculations ; that the Leghorn branch 
 would remonstrate if be drew too largely on them, or the Prank-
 
 2 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 fort firm give cause for remonstrance by drawing too heavily on 
 him. He stood alone. His agents and correspondents were his 
 obedient and trembling slaves, and he the most generous but the 
 most exacting: of taskmasters. There was no trifling with Sir 
 Jasper Goldthorpe. How could one jest with a man who had so 
 much monej ? lie had had rivals, Now and then some gorged 
 Hebrew capitalist of Paris or Madrid would strive to shoulder his 
 way past him with bank-notes and bonds ; but Sir Jasper Gold- 
 thorpe, with icy English politeness, would drop a couple of heavy 
 golden ingots on the capitalist's toes, and force him to retreat, 
 howling and discomfited. Once or twice some lucky speculator 
 in Australian wool, some enriched digger, some auriferous bubble- 
 monger of railway shares and mining-schemes, would make a dead 
 set at Sir Jasper's supremacy, — would strive to outvie him by 
 taking a bigger house, giving grander parties, purchasing more 
 acres of park-land, sub^^cribing to more charities and packs of 
 hounds. Then Sir Jasper would smile his frigid smile, step down 
 to a little shooting-box, if it were in autumn, or to the sea-side if 
 in spring ; pop away at the pheasants, or stroll about in a jacket 
 and a slouched hat, as though he were some miserable wretch 
 of eight hundred pounds a year; and then, coming quietly back 
 to town, would manage somehow to crush his rivals. He always 
 crushed them. The Australian wool-speculator would spend 
 some thousands in a contested election — lose it ; or, gaining it, be 
 unseated for bribery, and be forced to retrench. The digger's 
 agents would fail, or he drink himself into a cerebral congestion. 
 The bubble-monger would burst and turn out a common cheat. 
 Alone, triumphant and immovable, without a wrinkle in his brow 
 or a crease in his waistcoat, would stand Sir Jasper Goldthorpe. 
 At last people gave up contending with him, and were content to 
 agree that he was a wonderful man. 
 
 His beginnings had been small enough.' It was rumoured 
 that his father was but a small tradesman in a country town. 
 There were found even those bold enough to whisper, " Bankrupt 
 in 'twenty-five ; didn't pay twopence in the pound," — alluding to 
 the paternal Goldthorpe. Sir Jasper always spoke of his sire as 
 "my excellent and worthy father;" and you may be sure that no 
 yrord of detraction agaiust his progenitor was ever audible in his
 
 WHAT CAME OUT OF A COURT IN THE CITY. «5 
 
 presence, or within a good distance thereof. He had himself first 
 made an appearance iu public with a company which certainly did 
 not succeed after he left it, but which realised tremendous profits 
 while he was on the direction. He had gone largely into govern- 
 ment contracts, and had been the special object of several com- 
 missiions of iuquiry ; but it always turned out that it was 
 somebody else, aud not he, who was to be blamed for shoes that 
 wouldn't go on, and muskets that wouldn't go off; and commis- 
 sioners, witnesses, and accountants were all loud in their praises 
 of Mr. Groldthorpe's — he was Mr. Goldthorpe then — public spirit 
 and unimpeachable integrity. He had always been a prosperous 
 man, with that Avondrous Midas faculty for turning everything 
 which he touched into gold ; but the termination of a particularly 
 searching committee, which had been moved for in a series of 
 vehement speeches by two Radical members, and had very nearly 
 been the menus of ejecting the Government of the day from 
 office, seemed the turning-poiut in his greater fortune. How the 
 man's riches sw'elled aud swelled after his contract rum had been 
 denounced as a fiery poison, and his contract rice sneered at 
 as the sweepings of the dock-warehouses ! He thenceforward 
 devoted himself to politics: one of the Radic;il members was 
 regularly coughed down for several sessions, and the other, at the 
 next general election, lost his seat, and, more tlian suspected of 
 debt, was compelled to fly to Brussels in Brabant. Mr, Hemp of 
 the Sheriff's Court makes proclamation of outlawry against him 
 with admirable regularity. After this, naturally Mr. Goldthorpe 
 gave up contracts altogether. It was about this time that he 
 made such immense sums in the shipping line of business. He 
 had a fleet which sailed to the East Indies, and a fleet which 
 sailed to the West; and his Australian bullion dealings and 
 speculations in wool, copper, and tallow were prodigious. 
 With great meekness and condescension he consented to serve 
 the office of Sheriff in the metropolis. He might have been 
 Alderman and Lord Mayor, of course, had he so chosen ; but 
 these latter dignities he declined. He got into Parliament; his 
 constituents, touched with gratitude and reverence, it is to be 
 supposed, for the immense wealth he possessed, insisting on 
 paying his election expenses to the uttermost farthing. When 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE se\t;n sons of mammon. 
 
 he was supposed to be worth about a million of money, a com- 
 mittee of merchants and bankers met at the London Tavern, and 
 boldly put down their hundreds and their fifties for a testimonial, 
 which — a cJief-d'ceuvre of the ateliers of Mr. Benson of Cornhill, 
 and forming a pleasing pyramidal composition in burnished and 
 frosted gold, including dolphins, the Three Graces, emblematic 
 figures of Peace and Commerce, a nautilus-shell, an Egyptian 
 pyramid, and an Arab steed — the malicious described it as three 
 race-cups hammered into one — was presented to him at a grand 
 banquet held at the "Albion," Aldersgate Street. He was 
 master of the Mystery of Battleaxe-makers, and gracefully pre- 
 sided over the patronage in the gift of that wealthy company, in 
 the shape of fat livings in the Church and presentations to the 
 Company's schools. He was great at Goldsmiths' Hall ; for if he 
 didn't make actual plate and jewellery, he made the raw material, 
 gold, by heaps : — which is far better. Soon after he entered 
 Parliament he was made a Baronet ; — 'twas the least tribute that 
 could be paid to his transcendent merits and riches. He was 
 received with immense respect in the House of Commons, and 
 his opinions on financial questions, although he scarcely ever 
 spoke, were looked upon as incontrovertible. The Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer was generally thought to be sure of another six 
 months' tenure of ofiice if he could only be seen walking with 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe on the river-terrace. He was usually 
 lucky enough to get excused from committees ; it was known how 
 rich a man he was, and how much he had to. Had he not been 
 so useful to the Government, there is little doubt that, ere this 
 history opens, he would have been made a Peer. 
 
 The year 1847, and the succeeding year of revolution and 
 political turmoils, shook, as you will remember, the commerce of 
 the Continent to its very centre, and some shocks of the universal 
 earthquake were felt even in the sound and stable city of London. 
 Many brave and ancient firms utterly vanished. It was then, so 
 the gossips said, that Sir Jasper Goldthorpe made his famous coup 
 of purchasing, at about a third of their value, the diamonds and 
 other regalia of the distressed and fugitive sovereigns of Europe. 
 "When confidence was restored, and the reign of legitimacy recom- 
 menced diamonds were at a premium again, and Sir Jasper Gold-
 
 WHAT CAME OUT 01' A COURT IN THE CITY. 5 
 
 thorpe realised. He had done with all his mercantile speculations 
 now, — had no longer large ventures on the sea, or trains of obse- 
 quious shipping and colonial brokers at his heels. He dealt in 
 Money, and money alone. He turned money over, and in the 
 summersault it made itself into more money. He crumpled a 
 piece of paper, and it distilled drops of gold into his coffers. The 
 more bankrupt was a European state, or a South-American 
 republic, the richer became Sir Jasper Goldthorpe. He pur- 
 chased railways, but he did not carry them out. He farmed 
 mines and revenues, but he neither worked nor collected them. 
 They remained with him but a few days ; but every thing of which 
 he took hold was a golden orange, and he managed to squeeze it 
 so long a^he held it. 
 
 In the year 1849, Sir Jasper Goldthorpe was just fifty years of 
 age. As Christmas came round, he was good enough to remember, 
 on returning thanks for the proposal of his health at a grand feast 
 at Battleaxe-makers' Hall, that he was born on the twenty-seventh 
 of December, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and ninety-nine. 
 He said "Anno Domini;" for though his words were few, they 
 were always sonorous, and had a rich metallic sound. His admirers 
 declared that they were worth their weight in gold. The cheers 
 at the announcement of the date of his nativity were deafening. 
 About Christmas time 1849, then, Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, Bart., 
 M.P., P.E.S. (he had contributed a wonderful paper on the Greek 
 drachma to the transactions of the Eoyal Society, and was dignified 
 moreover with many more initials than I care to enumerate), was 
 a hale fresh-coloured gentleman, slightly corpulent, and with a 
 very slight stoop in his shoulders, but looking on the whole a 
 model of health and strength. He was not in the least bald, — 
 so rich a man could not afibrd to lose even a hair, — and his locks, 
 thin as they were, were not even gray, but of a dull flaxen colour. 
 " Tow head " Sir Jasper had been opprobriously nick-named by 
 political opponents at election time. He was quite cleanly shaven 
 and very fresh-coloured. His eyes were blue-gray, and mirrors of 
 placidity — that is, when you could get him to look at you ; for 
 Sir Jasper was short-sighted. He read with a double eye-glass, 
 and when he was not reading usually bent his eyes downwards. 
 He was a tall man, and wore a white hat in winter. His hands
 
 6 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 were very fat, smooth, and dimpled, his fingers very short and 
 thick at the tips. Much handhng of money had blunted them, 
 perhaps. A black frock-coat, gray trousers, the invariable buff 
 waistcoat already mentioned, the double eye-glass, a plain black 
 necktie, a very high shirt-collar, of the old tape-tied kind, not 
 buttoned ; no rings or trinkets of any kind. Imagine the form I 
 have described so attired, and you will have a definite notion of 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe. He came down to the Office every 
 morning vrith unvarying punctuality (save during the vacations 
 he methodically allowed himself) at ten o'clock. He always came 
 down in his carriage — a double-bodied, high-hung, two-hundred- 
 guinea-pair-of-horses one. He would as soon have thought of 
 riding in a brougham at the east end as of paying nineteeu shil- 
 lings in the pound. At his villas and palaces he had plenty of 
 broughams, and phaetons, and curricles, and things ; and iu the 
 country he did not disdain to ride on a shaggy little pony, or to 
 drive a tiuy wicker-work carriage, like a clothes-basket upon 
 wheels ; but between Temple Bar and Eastcheap the carriage was 
 part of his state and the handmaiden to his richee. But, though 
 he would not ride eastward in a brougham, it was touching to mark 
 the humility with which this very rich man would hire a common, 
 lowly, four-wheeled cab for conveyance to public meetings or rail- 
 way stations. Those who knew how rich he was said he looked 
 ten times richer, meekly sitting on the shabby cushions of the 
 four-wheeler, with his bundle of papers — contracts for the new 
 loan perhaps — or his little locked travelling bag beside him. He 
 was fond, too, of walking ; and, with his umbrella in one hand 
 and his buckskin gloves (which he never wore) in the other, might 
 often be seen peacefully strolling towards the Koyal Exchange, 
 the Bank, or the India House, quite unmoved, apparently, by the 
 rush and turmoil of the Poultry, Cornhill, or Leadeuhall Street. 
 He was never in a hurry ; you might see him serenely gazing in 
 at the windows of the bullion-dealers and jewellers, or blandly 
 contemplating the fire-proof safes and cash-boxes at Chubb's, as 
 though time was no object to him ; although you knew that hun- 
 dreds of people were at that moment anxiously waiting to see 
 him, and hungering for one of his golden smiles. AVhat need 
 had he to be in a hurry ? He knew that he, being so rich, would
 
 WHAT CAME OUT OF A COURT IN THE CITY. 7 
 
 be waited for ; and yet Sir Jasper Goldtborpe was proverbial for 
 punctuality, and in most cases, where any matters of business 
 were concerned, contrived to be a little beforehand with those he 
 had transactions with. 
 
 Who isnows Beryl Court ? It lies between Temple Bar and 
 Eastcheap, as aforesaid. Need I be more explicit ? Well, it is 
 not a hundred yards from St. Mary Axe. I daren't say more, for 
 fear of compromising people. The street from which Beryl Court 
 leads is very narrow, and very poor, and very dirty ; and although 
 it is the centre of a hive of wealth and industry, of lordly counting- 
 bouses, board-rooms, and wholesale groceries, is given up to the 
 meanest description of commerce. Petty little hucksters' and 
 chandlers' shops nestle under the wing of the merchant princes, 
 iron safes, crammed with gold and notes. One side of the street 
 may, however, for all its dirt and squalor, be secretly wealthy; for 
 it is almost exclusively occupied by the unwindowed shops of Jew- 
 dealers in oranges, grapes, and almonds, the which spread a very 
 pleasant odour in Beryl Court. It would be pleasanter, perhaps, 
 were it not mingled with the smell of fried fish and strongly- 
 pickled vegetables, retailed in the few little stalls forming the 
 exception to the rule of fruit-selling. The Caucasian proprietors 
 of these establishments are dirty and wretched-looking from 
 Sunday to Friday night ; but on Saturdays they are splendid in 
 brave garments and rich gems. They all had the most intense 
 respect for Sir Jasper Goldthorpe and Sir Jasper Goldthorpe's 
 carriage ; and their little black-eyed chaffering children sometimes 
 penetrated into Beryl Court, and peered admiringly at the Palace 
 of Gold erected there. 
 
 For it was a palace; a marble-fronted house, with wings forming 
 three parts of a square ; the fourth a red brick wall, with a porter's 
 lodge in one corner. The court itself beautifully flagged with 
 gray and white stone in chequers ; and in the centre a pretty 
 fountain, w^here a little boy with nothing on him spouted water 
 from a conch-sheU all day long. The stream seemed to be mur- 
 muring odes in praise of riches. The windows were all plate- 
 glass, the wire-gauze blinds had golden headings ; over the door 
 was sculptured the Goldthorpe family cognizance, — three martlets 
 on a field or ; the bloody hand^ of its proper blazon ; motto, Ex
 
 8 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 sudore, aurum, the whole emblazoned on a richly-framed marble 
 escutcheon. On the well-polished mahogany door glittered the 
 brass-plate of the firm " Goldthorpe and Co." — a plate burnished 
 much brighter than gold. The architecture of Beryl Court, exte- 
 riorly, was entirely Italian Eenaissance, and had been commanded 
 by Sir Jasper, — in a letter of four lines to his architect, — just after 
 he achieved his baronetcy. But his decorative fancy was an odd 
 one ; for, inside, the house waa at least a hundred and fifty years 
 old. Some South-Sea director had lived here in the reign of 
 George I. ; and there was a vast staircase painted with the story 
 of the Golden Fleece, and a pagan apotheosis sprawled on the 
 ceiling of almost every room. The staircase, up which you might 
 have driven a coach-and-four, was of polished oak, with richly 
 carved balustrades, and its stairs were laid with an oil-cloth 
 painted in imitation of tiger's skin. All the rooms were panelled, 
 with enriched marble mantelpieces and curiously inlaid floors ; 
 but all this work was of the old time of the South-Sea director. 
 No gas was permitted in Beryl Court. The numerous staff of 
 clerks worked in winter time by the light of dumpy wax candles. 
 The balance of the petty cash account exceeded the salary of a 
 county court judge. The heads of departments had Turkey carpets 
 laid in their rooms, rosewood escritoires to write upon, morocco- 
 covered easy-chairs to sit upon. Silent and civil messengers 
 glided in and out on their behests. Lunch was brought to them 
 when they asked. "Were those repasts charged in the petty cash, 
 I wonder ? Broughams came for many of the superior clerks 
 when office hours were over. Perhaps it was for that reason that 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe repudiated, while in the City, the vehicles 
 just spoken of Everybody employed by the firm, from the heads 
 of departments to the youngest office-boy, was paid so highly 
 that embezzlement was unheard of. A young man's fortune was 
 thought to be made if he could only be got into Goldthorpe's 
 house, although there was not the remotest chance of his ever 
 obtaining a partnership therein ; and parents and guardians used 
 to intrigue for years to obtain junior clerkships for their sons and 
 wards, just as tliey would intrigue for Indian cadetships or 
 commissions in the Guards, 
 
 What did all these chiefs of department?, clerks, messengers,
 
 "WHAT CAME OUT OP A COTJUT IN" THE CITY. 9 
 
 aud office-boys do from nine in the morning nntil five at 
 night ? None but those emploj^ed by the firm could tell. They 
 ■wrote, wrote, and wrote : took letters off files and put them on 
 others ; consulted huge vellum-covered volume?, and made entries 
 in other tomes similarly bound, perpetually ; but what they did 
 was a mystery. There was no faint odour about, of samples of 
 rice, indigo, coffee, sugar, opium, as in merchants' and brokers' 
 offices. No sea-captains showed their bronzed fiices in the 
 counting-house. No actual cash was ever seen : but nobody 
 had the least doubt that the one great subject of work at Gold- 
 thorpe's was Money. All day long a stream of junior clerks 
 with pocket-books secured by leather-covered chains wound 
 round their waists would drop Bills for Acceptance into the 
 great letter-box by the brass-plate in Beryl Court ; and all day 
 long a counter-stream of Goldthorpian messengers would issue 
 from Beryl Court, and from their leather chain-secured pocket- 
 books drop Bills for Acceptance in other letter-boxes all over 
 the City. 
 
 Sir Jasper's room was the plainest in the entire establishment. 
 It was papered a sober drab, and matted ; but -it was a very Ear 
 of Dionysius for gutta-percha tubing and ivory mouth-piece?. 
 Nearly one side of the room was taken up by a huge iron safe, 
 which, with its many locks and knobs and handles, looked like a 
 monument to Mammon. 
 
 Add to Beryl Court the palace in Onyx Square, with its 
 picture-gallery, its grand ball-room, and its belvedere towering 
 above the neighbouring mansions, sumptuous and superb. Add 
 to these the princely domain of Goldthorpe in Surrey, with its 
 deer-park and its home-park, its Yitruvian palazzo ; its con- 
 servatories, graperies, pineries, kennels, model-dairies, lawns, 
 terraces, mazes, grottoes, and temples : — its stables and coach- 
 houses, its pavilions and lodges. Add to these a fine house 
 at Kemp Town, Brighton, and the little shooting-box I have 
 already glanced at. Surely it needs no more to convince you that 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe was a power in the state and a prince in. 
 the land. 
 
 So gold is a chimera, is it ? Ah, my romantic friends, you little 
 know what a reality gold is. See what it had given this fortunate
 
 10 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 man. Power and influence, respect, adulation, worsliip almost. 
 Houses and parks and palaces, carriages and horses and hounds : 
 a red hand in his escutcheon, a handle to his name, a seat in the 
 Parliament of the country, a peerage in prospect ; — and Gold, 
 nothing but gold, had done it all.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE TWENTT-SETENTH OE DECEMBER. 
 
 "And if ever," exclaimed Lady Goldtliorpe, puffing with over- 
 exertion, — " if ever I try to get a Christmas-tree into a clarence 
 again, I'm a Dutchman, — that's to say, a Dutchwoman, — 
 that's all." 
 
 Lady Goldthorpe ^Yas stout in figure and mature in years, and 
 might be excused for puffing. Moreover, although it was a very 
 cold winter's day. Lady Goldthorpe had on a very thick dress of 
 black velvet, beneath which was revealed an underskirt of quilted 
 silk ; and a long seal-skin mantle trailed from her broad shoulders, 
 and a crimson silk scarf was tied round her comfortable chin, and 
 purple plush gloves defended her hands, and goloshes covered her 
 feet, and a bonnet of velvet and lace sat closely to her round 
 jovial-looking face ; and there were plenty of rugs and shawls and 
 mufflers about her in the carriage where she sat, and a rnuflfofrich 
 fur bolstered her up on one side, and a very fat shaggy Skye 
 terrier on the other. The very gold chain she wore round her 
 neck was heavy enough to make her warm ; and as Lady Gold- 
 thorpe's clarence — she had taken out the clarence that day — was 
 cosily lined and padded and cushioned, and had elastic stuffijd 
 cushions and a fleecy rug at the bottom, it would not, I think, 
 have been a thing to be wondered at if Lady Goldthorpe had 
 puffed even without excessive exertion. 
 
 But there was that Christmas-tree into the bargain. Now you 
 may get almost anything — some people say everything — into a 
 carpet-bag; but I much doubt whether, under any circumstances, 
 a Christmas-tree can be comfortably stowed away in the carriage 
 called a clarence. It isn't within the laws of nature or the fitness 
 of things. A flower-pot is bad enough ; a vivarium can with 
 difficulty be conveyed in a hackney-coach ; but a Christmas-tree,
 
 13 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 never ! Not that tliis adjunct, wliicli we have borrowed from the 
 German Yaterland to make our Christmas festivals merrier, was 
 of the largest size. 'Twas but a poor little sapling evergreen, a 
 supplementary tree, designed to act as satellite to the monarchs 
 of the forest in Lady Goldthorpe's saloons. Her ladyship always 
 had half a dozen trees at Christmas. But one had caufrht fire 
 from the premature illumination by infantine hands of the waxen 
 tapers among its branches the night before, and had not only been 
 consumed to its roots, but had very near burned the belvedered 
 palace in Onyx Square along with it. The twenty- seventh of 
 December was the day on which it was Lady Goldthorpe's im- 
 memorial custom to have all her trees in full bloom. It was 
 essential to repair at once the loss of the burnt-up arhuste ; and 
 so Lady Goldthorpe had ordered the clarence, and driven down to 
 Fortnum and Mason's to buy an additional tree, ready-hung with 
 toys, and fit to be lighted up instanter. 
 
 The tree was duly purchased — that was a very easy matter ; 
 but the difficulty was to get it into the carriage, for Lady Gold- 
 thorpe was an impulsive lady and a determined one ; and when 
 she could have her own way — which she generally had — liked to 
 have it. She had said she would carry home the tree with her, 
 and, notwithstanding the apparently insurmountable impediments 
 to the accomplishment of her design, she insisted upon its being 
 carried out. First her embroidered, buttoned, and striped foot- 
 page tried, but lamentably failed iu the attempt ; and, under the 
 humiliating threat of having his ears boxed — a menace rendered 
 still more galling by its being proffered in the presence of a 
 momentarily increasing circle of street-boys, who looked at the 
 whole affair with the liveliest interest — he retired to the coach-box 
 and snivelled ; whereupon he was called by the coachman, in a 
 wheezy undertone, a " young warmint." The domestic who drove 
 Lady Goldthorpe's clarence was so fat, so warmly clad and 
 wrapped up, and had so broad and jovial a^countenance, that he 
 might have passed for a poor relation of her ladyship's, whom the 
 inexorable logic of necessity compelled to hold the reins, but who, 
 off the box, was a Goldthorpe and a brother. 
 
 One of Messrs. Fortnum and Mason's young gentlemen — I 
 dare not term them young men — having likewise done his best,
 
 THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF DECExMBER. 13 
 
 and been stigmatised as an idiot for bis pains, at wbicb be blusbed, 
 smiled, rubbed his hands — as was seemly in the presence of a 
 lady-customer who ran sucli heavy bills, and, what is more, paid 
 them with unvarying regularity — Lady Goldthorpe took the re- 
 fractory tree (which wasn't more than a foot and a half high) in 
 hand herself But the tree was as obstinate as her ladyship. It 
 wouldn't stand up, or lie down, or lean against the side of the 
 carriage. It would protrude its branches either from one window 
 or the other. Once it fell a-top of the fat terrier, irritating with 
 its twigs that animal's nose, and causing him to yelp piteously ; 
 and at last Lady Goldthorpe's unsuccessful struggles with the 
 mutinous fragment of vegetation gave rise to the exclamation 
 recorded at the commencement of this chapter. 
 
 " Drat the tree ! " the lady cried out, in increasing exasperation, 
 '• There's two drums off, and a banjo, and a flying Cupid, and a 
 sugarstuflf parrot. Now will you, then, obstinate ? " 
 
 She gave a vigorous pull and a wrencb at the recalcitrant tree. 
 The last appeal seemed to have touched its obdurate heart, and by 
 dint of more coaxing and a little propping up with the muff and 
 a couple of shawls, it gradually consented to assume an erect and 
 stationary position. 
 
 "Home!" cried Lady Goldthorpe to the page, who jumped 
 down as Blessrs. Fortnum and Mason's young gentleman tele- 
 graphed to him that peace was restored. The little street-boys 
 gave a cheer, — why they scarcely knew, only, as a reflective young 
 butcher observed, "the old un," meaning her ladyship, looked 
 "such a jolly party; " the young gentleman who had been called 
 an idiot retired into the emporium of Christmas and colonial 
 luxuries to which he was attached, and indulged in comments 
 with his comrades on Lady Goldthorpe's hasty temper, and on the 
 munificent Christmas boxes she always distributed ; and away 
 drove the clarence, with its two showy horses, in the direction of 
 Park Lane, the toy-laden branches of the Christmas-tree bobbing 
 round Lady Goldthorpe's jovial face, until she looked like a fat 
 Fair Eosamond in an ambulatory bower. 
 
 "Thank goodness for all things!" said the wife of the Prince of 
 Beryl Court. There couldn't be two Lady Goldthorpes, you know, 
 — the scheme of the universe couldn't stand it. " Thank good-
 
 14 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 ness ! " her ladyship repeated, when she had recovered her breath, 
 and her usual equanimity of temper, "one of my troubles is over. 
 Not that I've any thanks to give you, Magdalen Hill," she con- 
 tinued, "sitting quiet and cool there like a stuck pig, and me 
 breaking my heart over the thing, and the mother of Seven Chil- 
 dren, all boys too." 
 
 Tes ; Lady Goldthorpe had the number of children she alluded 
 to : and there were Seven Sons to the Mammon of Beryl 
 Court. 
 
 "I can't see, mamma," answered a calm quiet voice on the 
 other side of her ladyship, " that seven childreu have anything 
 to do with your trouble. Was the Christmas-tree an eighth 
 one?" 
 
 " Then why didn't you help me. Miss Icicle ? " 
 
 "I knew I couldn't be of any use. Tou know how weak and 
 awkward I am. And besides, I thought that you would desist, 
 and allow the people at the shop to do that which they should 
 have done in the first instance : — send the thing home." 
 
 "Ah, I dare say," grumbled, but not iU-humouredly, the mother 
 of seven children. " It's always the same : — weak and awkward- 
 You're not weak and awkward when you're playing the harp or 
 the pianoforte like an angel, or painting saints with gold cheese- 
 plates round their heads, and their toes turned in : — poor deluded 
 creeturs. You're not weak and awkward when you're writing 
 letters five pages long, let alone the crossing, to somebody in 
 India, are you ? " 
 
 A faint blush rose on the pale face, and a fainter smile played 
 on the firm lips of Lady Goldthorpe's companion. 
 
 "What companion ? Mufi"s don't blush, at least not inanimate 
 ones ; and Skye terriers, although they sometimes grin and snarl, 
 seldom smile. "Who was Lady Goldthorpe's companion, occupying, 
 indeed, the remaining back seat of the carriage, the dog sitting 
 in conscious majesty between ? 
 
 "Why, Magdalen Hill, to be sure. And who was Magdalen 
 Hill? A very few words will suffice to introduce her to you. 
 She was very tall, and very slender, and had au odd prejudice 
 against wearing crinoline, which, if you will carry your remem- 
 brance back, began to show itself in England as a Trench impor-
 
 THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OP DECEMBER. l5 
 
 tation about ten years ago.* She had very large gray eyes, veiled 
 with very long lashes, aud which had a fixed and stera aad not 
 very pleasant expression. Her lips were, as I have hinted, firmly 
 cut— " chiselled " is I believe the proper term— and when she 
 opened them, very bitter words issued occasioually from between 
 them and her white teeth. Her feet— what do I know about a 
 lady's feet ? and what gross dullards are those, who, looking on 
 "Woman, cast down their eyes to the earth she walks upon, 
 instead of looking upward to the heaven in her face ! Well, her 
 feet. They were hidden, as a lady's feet should almost ever be ; 
 and she never danced, aud he who describes her never met her on 
 a wet day. She had very long white hands, and I can assure you 
 that her fingers were not tapering ; for, albeit their hue was ex- 
 quisite, long practice on the pianoforte, on which she was an ac- 
 complished performer, had given somewhat of a muscular character 
 to her digits, and to the nerves and muscles that belonged to 
 them. Her hair — yes, her hair, how well that is remembered ! — 
 was raven black, was glossy, worn in two plaia bandeaux. I spoke 
 of her pale face. It was pale almost to the pallor of Death. 
 You know the pallor I mean — the first camellia-Ike waxiness 
 of the mortal that has put on immortality, not the dreadful hues 
 of after days. 
 
 Such was Magdalen Hill. She dressed habitually in that which 
 Chief Justice Hale advised his children to dress in, "sad colour" 
 — grays and fawns, and lilacs and blacks, relieved by lighter rays. 
 She wore high-necked dresses always ; and for all ornament car- 
 ried a plain cross of dead gold at her throat. And she seemed 
 one of those women who look neither happy nor unhappy, de- 
 spairing nor resigned, quick nor slow, clever nor stupid ; but who 
 are ready and able for anything — to run away with you, or to go 
 into a convent and wear spiked girdles, aud scourge themselves 
 thrice a day ; to be the idol of a Parisian salon, or to teach a 
 Sunday-school full of clod-hopping children ; to say spontaneously 
 
 * Lest tbe author should be accused of an anachronism, he begs to refer his 
 readers to a comic publication called the Man in the Moon, which may be con- 
 sulted in the reading-room of the British Museum, and in Volume II. (under the 
 date of 1847) of whicli work he will find this piragraph : "All the cab-horses in 
 Paris are said to have lost their tails in consequence of the demand for crinoline.
 
 16 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 " I love you," or to a fervent protestation of love to answer, "Sir, 
 1] don't understand you ;" to go to the end of the world for 
 an idea, or to go home to their mothers, to bear blows, ill usage, 
 coarse language, — anything but infidelity ; or to take offence at 
 the omission of a finger-napkin at dinner, and serve you with a 
 citation in the Divorce Court for cruelty because you have taken 
 them to the Opera in a cab instead of a brougham. "Who has not 
 known these fathomless, inscrutable women ; looked upon those 
 eyes, whose glance would either beam out a message of happiness 
 to you, or turning towards the executioner send you to the block, 
 and yet do neither ; but behave always in conformity with les 
 parfaites convenances ! Such was Magdalen Hill, with her eyesi 
 and her lips, and her long demure but cruel hands, and her set 
 phrases, and her sarcastic parentheses, aad the great mystery of 
 Heart and Soul within her, which would have baffled you, La 
 Bruyere, in all your skill in character, and you, John Wilkes, with 
 all your boast of subduing the untractable fair. And of such 
 there are thousands, who are born to be riddles and paradoxes, 
 and the despair of passionate men. 
 
 Magdalen Hill was an orphan. Her father had been a colonial 
 judge, and had died of the yellow fever just at the time when he 
 had laid by enough money to give a dowry to his little daughter, 
 then at boarding-school, a mere child, in England. Magdalen 
 was not a favourite at school. She never played, never got into 
 disgrace, never did anything that her governesses had to forgive 
 her for, and love her more for the atonement of her fault. She 
 was always calm, equable, — not silent, but incomprehensible, 
 
 " Upon my word," said, in despair, Miss Mirabelle, the duenna 
 of Selina House, Brixton, "if Miss Hill had not had sixty 
 thousand pounds to her fortune, I do believe that the best thing 
 that could have happened to her would have been to be an articled 
 pupil, and turn out a 'trotting governess ;' " by which appellation 
 was meant, I believe, those unhappy females who, collected and 
 resigned, go out daily in rain, or sleet or snow, to give lessons in 
 middle-class families, and are spoken of by the servant who opens 
 the door as " that young pusson who comes at twelve, and wiWnof 
 wipe her feet." Poor wearied creature, with an English lady's 
 soul within you, how much mud have you carried away from rich 
 
 I
 
 THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF DECEMBER. 17 
 
 men's houses, when you should have shaken off the dust of your 
 feet on the scraper ! 
 
 But Magdalen Hill had sixty thousand pounds to her fortune- 
 She was a rich little girl and a rich young woman. Sir Jasper 
 Goldthorpe had been her guardian. Her holidays had been spent 
 in his family. After she came of age, — for she was now twenty- 
 two, — his house became her home. And, as we have seen, she 
 called good old Lady Goldthorpe her " mamma." 
 
 I come back to the blush and the smile— both faint— awakened 
 by the good-natured taunt that she was neither weak nor awkward 
 when she wrote those voluminous epistles to " somebody in India." 
 
 "Tou know that he is coming home, mamma," she said, laying 
 her hand on her companion's arm, and in a voice that would have 
 been soft and kindly, had there not been, as in an old harpsichord, 
 a string broken somewhere. 
 
 " Yes, my darling Maggie, my own good girl," the wife of the 
 British baronet responded, " I know it well. He has promised, 
 he has tried ; he will, I'm sure, if human will can prevail. He 
 knows that the twenty-seventh of December is his father's birth- 
 day. He knows that he is my own dear son, which I bore him in 
 travail and in sorrow twenty-seven years ago, when we were poor, 
 Magdalen Hill — when we were poor, when my Goldy wasn't the 
 great man he is now ; when Goldy walked ten miles over the snow 
 to fetch a doctor, and the good gentleman said that I bore up 
 more bravely than mortal woman ever did, and — Heaven bless 
 him for it — left half a sovereign on the mantlepiece of his own 
 gentleman's money, and hid the guinea fee my husband had 
 scraped together sixpence by sixpence, at the very back of the 
 Bible on the chest of drawers. I know that my son will come 
 home from the far East Indies. I know he will. He has timed 
 his time ; and if wind and weather don't stop him, he'll be 
 bere to-night. He w^as born in '23. He got his cadetship in '40. 
 ind Goldy thought it a good catch ; although I'm sure, situated 
 IS he now is, he'd make my youngest boy Emperor of Eooshia. ' 
 My son Hugh will be back to-night, and you know what he's 
 coming for. He's a captain in the army. He's coming back, not 
 done to see his father and mother and brothers, but he's coming 
 lome to marry you, Magdalen Hill, which he fell in love with
 
 18 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 you five years back, when lie was home on leave ; and I know, for 
 all your face that frightens me, that you love him, and that he 
 loves you ; and though I am but a poor woman which was ill 
 brought up, and wasn't always so, I love my son and daughter 
 which is to be, and I've had seven children, all boys." 
 
 It was a very indecorous thing to do at Grosvenor Gate, Park 
 Lane ; but it is none the less true that Lady Goldthorpe, the 
 mother of seven children, all boys, and the wife of the richest man 
 in the City of London, did, there and then, and within the very 
 shadow of Grosvenor Gate, and in her own clarence, throw her 
 arms about the neck of her companion, and vehemently kiss her. 
 "Who let her kiss, and returned the embrace. 
 
 "I'm sure," the good lady remarked, affectionately smoothing 
 the dark bands of Magdalen Hill, which had become slightly dis- 
 arranged, "that we've all got our troubles, even to the richest of 
 us. It was years, my dear, before I could receive company with- 
 out trembling all over, or give an evening party without wishing 
 that I might sink through the drawing-room carpet. When I 
 married my Goldy, I hadu't an h in my alphabet," — in making 
 this confession Lady Goldthorpe very nearly succeeded in putting 
 an h to the alphabet she mentioned, — "and now everything's 
 prospered with us. I'm sure that the very potato peelings 
 seemed to turn to gold in Goldy's hands ; and you're going to 
 marry Hugh, and I'm the happy mother of seven children." 
 
 Tes ; the Goldthorpe quiver was furnished with that number 
 of arrows. Let us mark off, one by one, the Seven Sons of 
 Mammon. 
 
 First came Iludi Jasoer Goldthorne. His first name from a 
 godfather, Mr. Hugh Desborough, who during Sir Jasper's early 
 career had been intimately connected with him in friendship and 
 in business. Hugh was twenty-six years of age. He was but a 
 captain in a regiment of native infantry in the service of the East 
 India Company ; but he had held importnnt staff appointments, 
 had been resident and political agent at the court of more than 
 one native prince, and had obtained great renown duriug the last 
 campaign against the Sikhs as the commander of that famous 
 corps of indigenous troopers, the Daglishwallah Irregular Cavalry. 
 
 Second came Ernest, born in the year 'twenty four, and conse-
 
 THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF DECEMBER, 19 
 
 quently that number of years old at the commencement of tliis 
 history. Ernest had early manifested a serious and studious 
 disposition ; had passed with great distinction through Eugby 
 school ; gained high honours at Cambridge ; took lioly orders ; 
 and had been recently inducted into the rectory of Swordsley, 
 worth a good niue hundred per annum, one of the comfortable 
 benefices in the gift of the Battleaxemakers' Company. 
 
 The tbird son, William, who was now twenty-three, had chosen, 
 like his eldest brother, the army for his profession ; but the times 
 being very different with his papa to those in which lie had been 
 glad to obtain a humble cadetship for his first-born, a commission 
 in a crack cavalry regiment had been purchased for him, and he 
 was now a lieutenant in the 19th Hussars. 
 
 The fourth Son of Mammon, Henry, was at sea. He had 
 entered a line-of-battle ship as naval cadet, and having served 
 his time as midshipman, and passed his examination with much 
 eclat, was now a mate, awaiting his lieutenant's commission on 
 board the Magnmiimov.s, ninety-one gun ship, at Malta. 
 
 George, the fifth son, aged nineteen, was an undergraduate at 
 Oxford, and was destined for the bar; his mother having the 
 firmest persuasion that Sir Jasper Goldthorpe had only to say 
 the word to have her George made Lord- Chancellor the moment 
 after he had donned his wig and gown. 
 
 Charles, the sixth son, was scarcely eighteen, but he was 
 already installed in a clerkship in the Foreign OflBce ; and Sir 
 Jasper's great friend, the Earl of Mount Olympus, had promised 
 Charles the very first foreign attacheship — at a nice court where 
 there was plenty of good society and a healthy climate — that 
 should become available. 
 
 Alfred, the seventh son, and who at Christmas 1849 was nearly 
 eleven years of age, was a boy at school at Eton, where he had 
 much more pocket-money, and had very nearly as much respect 
 paid to him as though he had been a little Duke. Having a taste 
 for history and a turn for recitation, his career was destined to 
 be " politics," by which Lady Goldthorpe understood that her 
 youngest son was to be made Prime Minister of England so soon 
 as he arrived at years of discretion. 
 
 At the grand Christmas party given in Onyx Square on the 
 
 c 2
 
 20 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 twenty-seventli of December, in honour of the double event, — 
 the joyful season and the birthday of Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, — 
 five of the Seven Sons of Mammon were present. The Eeverend 
 Ernest Goldthorpe, who was pale and demure, and wore a high 
 black silk waistcoat that met his bow-less white neckcloth, came 
 and talked church decoration and illuminated literature with 
 Magdalen Hill. Lieutenant AVilliam, of the 19th Hussars, 
 danced and flirted and supped copiously, and was admired — 
 chiefly for his moustaches and his impertinence — by all the young 
 ladies present, and was positively idolised by the said young 
 ladies' mammas. George, the fifth arrow in the auriferous 
 quiver, was there from Oxford. Charles, the sixth, the most 
 languid of bureaucratic dandies, was there from the Foreign 
 Ofiice. Alfred, the seventh, was there from Eton ; and although 
 he declined dancing, on the ground that it was "so precious slow," 
 made ample amends for his inactivity by energetic attacks on the 
 sweet things and the champagne at supper-time. 
 
 It was a juvenile party as well as an evening one. Good- 
 natured Lady Goldthorpe loved to have other people's children 
 besides her own around her at Christmas time. A bright band 
 of children overran the gorgeous saloons, and mingled with the 
 throng of grown-up fashionables and celebrities, who were but too 
 glad to pay their court at Onyx House and to its potent master. 
 Many pages would be needed to describe that distinguished com- 
 pany, or even to enumerate their names and dignities. There 
 were peers and peeresses, numerous foreigners of rank and 
 celebrity, immensely rich bald-headed old gentlemen, belonging 
 mostly to Banks and Boards, from the City ; marriageable young 
 ladies, marriage-making old ladies, and un marriageable middle- 
 aged ladies. There were members of parliament, barristers, 
 doctors, wealthy solicitors, proctors from Doctors' Commons, 
 wild slips of college-lads, friends of Willy Goldthorpe, Eton boys, 
 young ladies from boarding-school, and a sprinkling even of 
 artists and literary men ; for Sir Jasper Goldthorpe liked to 
 be well v;ith all classes, and by his bounty golden rays were 
 cast into the humblest homes. Amidst this varied, glittering, 
 rejoicing throng, the Great Millionnaire glided about bland, 
 erene, and silent. Nobody found fault with him for his taci-
 
 THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF DECEMBER. 21 
 
 turnity. It was sufficient to look upon him, to talk about his 
 wealth in whispers, on staircases, in conservatories, by mantle- 
 pieces, and in retired corners. The talking department of the 
 firm of Goldthorpe and Co. fell entirely to the share of her lady- 
 ship, whose conversation was not very profound, nor, to tell 
 truth, very grammatical, but who gossiped and laughed, and 
 pressed people to dance and eat and drink, until every body was 
 delighted with her. If she had been as mum as her husband, or, 
 talking, had given utterance to the baldest nonsense, the admira- 
 tion expressed for her would yet have been universal. "Was she 
 not the wife of the master of Beryl Court ? 
 
 So all these fine folks enjoyed themselves in junketing and feast- 
 ing till the night was very old, and the small hours began to 
 chime from the buhl clocks. But a certain gloom and anxiety 
 had stolen in among the gaiety and rioting, and sat on the coun- 
 tenances of three persons — Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, his wife, and 
 Magdalen Hill. No Hugh Goldthorpe had made his appearance. 
 Midnight came, and no Hugh. The time when his arrival might 
 have been expected was long past. Had he missed a train from 
 Marseilles ? Had he been detained in Paris ? Had he fallen ill 
 on the road ? His brothers did not know that his coming was 
 so imminently looked for. It was to be a surprise to all — to his 
 relatives as to his friends. 
 
 One, two o'clock in the morning, and no Hugh Goldthorpe. 
 The gay company broke up and went home to talk of the delight- 
 ful evening they had spent, the boundless riches of Sir Jasper, the 
 charming eccentricity — had she been poor they would have called 
 it vulgarity — of Lady Goldthorpe. The Sons of Mammon bade 
 their parents good night, and retired to their rooms — all save the 
 subaltern of hussars, whose cabriolet was waiting for him, and 
 who drove down gaily to his club to spend the evening. Ihree 
 persons were left in the stately crimson drawing-room in Onyx 
 Square : Sir Jasper, evidently perturbed ; Lady Goldthorpe, who 
 made no secret of her approaching intention of seeking consolation 
 in a flood of tears ; and Magdalen Hill, with her pale face.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EETUEN OP THE FIEST-BORN. 
 
 Captain Hugh Goldthorpe, M.jST.I., ex-commander of the 
 Daglishwallah Irregulars, ex-Eesideut at the Court of Duffa Khan 
 Sahib, Rjijah of Jowlapore, is weary of Indian service. Barely 
 five years have elapsed since he was last in England on sick leave; 
 but he has sought and obtained fresh conge. He contemplates a 
 much longer stay in Europe ; and, indeed, it is exceedingly pro- 
 blematical whether he will ever return, to either of the three 
 Presidencies. He has shaken the branches of the Pagoda tree 
 quite long enough, and longs to enjoy his siestazt the foot thereot. 
 Six feet two in his stockings stands Hugh Goldthorpe, strongest 
 and coolest sahreur of liis corps, skilful in diplomacy, wise in durbar. 
 He is of the stuff of which great soldiers and statesmen are made ; 
 but his father is too rich, and his allowances have been too hand- 
 some, for him to continue seeking fresh advancement in either 
 career. He has had enough of glory, both in soldiering and nego- 
 tiation, and is only desirous of rest, and the enjoyment of the 
 wealth that is to be, or is already his, and the wife long since pro- 
 mised to him. His desires are modest, you see. The affianced 
 one — the Beloved One — is a stately lady, and a haughty one, 
 withal ; but she has told him that she loves him witli her whole 
 heart and soul, and that is enough for Captain Hugh. So the 
 hero of many intricate negotiations with crafty Asiatics, and of 
 fifty hand-to-hand combats with fierce Sikhs and Afghans, tran- 
 quilly puffs his cheroot in the expectation of a speedy return to 
 England, home, and beauty. He has engaged a saloon berth in 
 the Peninsula and Oriental Company's ship Isis, and, by the last 
 days of December, he gaily augurs that he will be in London. 
 He feels happier than many passengers on board, albeit they may 
 be nearly as rich as he, can feel ; for he has been fortunate enough
 
 KETURN OF THE FIRST-BOUX. 2o 
 
 to bring his liver away with him. He is broad of chest and sturdy 
 of limb, with haudsome straight-cut features, a mobile yet deter- 
 mined moutli, shaded with a tliick Saxon moustache, and a long 
 sillien beard curling down nearly to his waist. He will have that 
 latter appendage trimmed within moderate limits when he reaches 
 the shores of Albion. He is very brave, and strong, and resolute ; 
 but he is none the less joyous and amiable in private life, A lion 
 in the field, a fox in the council, he is a very lamb in the com- 
 pound ; and scores of blushing virgins of ail ages — from innocent, 
 trusting seventeen to perspicacious thirty-five — who had been 
 imported to India by rusee female relatives, with a view of putting 
 a stop to their dreary state of celibacy, have ogled Captain Hugh, 
 and sung songs at him, and embroidered pretty trifles for him, 
 and laid siege to his heart in a hundred difierent ways, every one 
 of which, for all his lamb-like demeanour, have proved totally 
 unavailing. Perhaps there was no citadel to besiege, nothing but 
 embankments and outworks ; the heart itself was in England, in 
 Onyx Square, with Magdalen Hill. He has been away five years ; 
 but as he paces the deck of the Isis he can scarcely persuade him- 
 self that so long a period has passed away. He leans against the 
 bulwarks of the vessel ploughing her way through the long rolling 
 waves of the Eed Sea. He pufis at that cheroot again, and gazes 
 upward at the fleecy clouds, passing gingerly — as though they 
 feared to take too great a liberty with the Queen of Night — across 
 the face of the shining moon. He thinks on his boyhood, on 
 the happy day when he received his direct appointment in the 
 Honourable Company's service, on his transition period of " grifi- 
 dom," of his efllorescence as a full-blown subaltern. The dead 
 dull heat of the climate falls harmlessly on him now; for he has 
 sweltered year after year in the tightest of uniforms, and the 
 heaviest of accoutrements, and again in all the charming abandon, 
 full of wild sartorial reveries, and of his irregular costume, beneath 
 the hottest-blazing sunshine. Tiie mere heavy sultry languor of 
 the Eed Sea feels comparatively cool to him ; but he recollects his 
 sensations when, as a boy, he first reached that " other side" which^ 
 to Anglo-Indians, means all the country that lies eastward beyond 
 the Egyptian desert, and firmly believed that his young life would 
 be fuiily scorched out of him before he reached his destination.
 
 '2i THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 PresUy came back to him the old doubts and fears, and surmises 
 of what his career in India would end in ; whether he would be 
 slain in battle, or rise in civil employments, or in any case vindi- 
 cate the old sobriquet of " Cockey Goldthorpe" bestowed upon 
 him at school. How well he remembered his first sword, new and 
 slender and shining ! now he has half a dozen blades with him, all 
 notched and red-rusted from deadly frays. He is coming Home. 
 That one thought has absorbed, for weeks, all the thoughts of his 
 waking hours, and even of his dreams. 
 
 Home ! He has reached Aden on his way ; he has gone down 
 into Egypt, and come to Cairo. At Shepherd's Hotel, where the 
 Overland caravan rests for a night, he declines joining the dinner- 
 party, and devotes his brief period of repose to eagerly devouring 
 the contents of the English newspapers, brought by the outward- 
 bound party of young cadets and yellow civilians who have just 
 arrived. As the mail nears England, Hugh's impatience and 
 home-sickness increase. The three days between Alexandria and 
 Malta are spent almost in a fever. At the Valetta post-ofSce he 
 gets a packet of letters from Home, — letters which breathe love 
 and tender interest in every line, — letters that tell him of the 
 glorious reception that awaits him when he reaches his father's 
 house. He sees no reason why he should not arrive in England 
 on the long-looked-for day, — his father's birthday. 
 
 He leaves Malta for Marseilles. The confinement of the vessel 
 becomes almost intolerable to him. He indulges in wild specula- 
 tions of days when monster viaducts shall cross the Mediterranean, 
 and express trains run without stopping from Marseilles to Malta. 
 He sits in the bows of the Messageries Imperiales steamer all day 
 long ; and when a sudden squall comes on in the Gulf of Lyons, 
 and delays the way of the ship by some three or four hours, 
 Captain Hugh becomes almost frantic with impatience. Why 
 can't squalls be put down by Act of Parliament ? 
 
 Marseilles has been made, at last. Captain Hugh, during the 
 last portions of the trip, has had his wits sufiiciently about him to 
 make friends with the mail-agent, who, he knows, will go straight 
 through to London at express speed, and whom he has persuaded 
 to accept him as a companion. 
 
 Up the steep hilly streets of Marseilles dashes the post-waggon.
 
 EETURX OP THE FIRST-BORN. 25 
 
 Cutting in between long tumbrils drawn by long-liorned oxen, and 
 driven by Spanisb-clad, swarthy, sleepy varlets, dashes and rattles, 
 but never too rapidly for Captain Hugh, the homeward-bound 
 convoy of letters and newspapers. Then he comes on to the 
 Trench railway, and finds himself in mid-winter, and discovers 
 that the pelisse he has been careful enough to bring with him, 
 lined throughout with fur, is none too warm. Away over the fiat 
 dusky plains of the Midi flies the express train with its one 
 carriage attached, shrieking, and sputtering, and roaring, but not 
 too fast for Captain Hugh. He cannot sleep. "Wakeful and 
 lynx-eyed, he remains up and anxious ; while his companions, the 
 English and French post-couriers, are slumbering in their respec- 
 tive corners. There is no time for set breakfasts or set dinners. 
 Long dusky loaves, with slices of Lyons sausage and fragrant- 
 smelling Brie cheese are thrust into the carriage at certain 
 stations, and then and there devoured by the three travellers. 
 The repast is washed down by great gulps of Medoc, imbibed in 
 the most primitive fashion from the bottle's mouth. 
 
 Paris at last, and in time to catch the 7-30 p.m. express from 
 Paris. In the rapidest of cabs. Captain Hugh scurries from the 
 terminus of the Lyons railway to that of the Chemin de Per 
 du Nord. He makes such haste that he is there twenty-five 
 minutes before the departure of the Calais train. He has parted 
 company by this time with his friends the mail-agents, English and 
 Prench ; and they are quite busy enough over the stowage of their 
 innumerable boxes to dispense with his society. Captain Hugh 
 is admitted by special favour on to the platform, instead of having 
 to wait in the Salle d'aftente. That is the last favour the English 
 courier shows him. Captain Hugh secures a place for himself in 
 a particularly comfortable-looking carriage, and places on the 
 corner seat his pelisse lined throughout with fur, and his Eussia- 
 leather-covered despatch-box. He strolls into the refreshment- 
 room, and has even five minutes for the discussion of his beloved 
 cheroot. 
 
 About seven o'clock there has drawn up at the entrance to the 
 terminus a pretty little one-horse brougham, with a coachman in 
 a livery that has something of an English fashion. A lacquey who 
 sits beside him dismounts, and assists a lady, who is the sole
 
 26 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 occupant of the carriage, to aliglit. A porter comes up, and, 
 touching his cap, at^ks politely whether Madame is going by the 
 train express. JS'o ; Madame has not any such intention. She 
 is merely here to see a friend off. She bids the coachman go 
 away, and away he drives. Then, followed by a little Blenheim 
 spaniel, Madame walks into the great entrance vestibule of 
 the station, where porters are rushing about with trucks 
 full of luggage, and people are crowding to the ticket office, and 
 vendors of cheap periodicals are offering their wares for sale, and 
 idlers are wandering about and staring, and police agents are 
 watching. 
 
 Madame is very short and slight in stature, and is richly clad in 
 very wide-spreading skirts. The hems of her garments are mar- 
 vels of fine linen and needlework. She is exquisite!)' gantee. She 
 has sparkling bracelets on her arms. Her bonnet is a paragon. 
 She wears her veil down ; but it is transparent enough for you to 
 see, beneath, that her face is very pretty, that she has a very fine 
 colour in her cheeks, that her teeth are very white, that her 
 mouth is very smiling, and that she has very fair flowing 
 ringlets. 
 
 She looks about her, and stamps her little foot as though in im- 
 patience. Anon she espies a diminutive and shabbily-attired man, 
 with curly grey hair, and a peaked nose somewhat purple in hue. 
 In face and gesture he is not unlike a ferret. She beckons to 
 him imperiously ; and the little man comes smii-king and bowing 
 up to her, rubbing his hands. 
 
 " Is he here, Sims ? " Madame asks in the English language. 
 
 "He is, and, O be joyful," answers the little shabby man, with 
 a grin that makes his face look more and more like a ferret, " our 
 agents have not deceived us. The telegraphic message from 
 3iarseilles wafi perfectl}' correct. He came with the courier in 
 charge of the mails, and I have just seen him in the refreshment 
 room. This has been a day of great grace." 
 
 "Do your errand," Madame says, tossing her ringlets, and 
 turning to caress her Blenheim spaniel. 
 
 The little shabby man hurries away, and at the door of the 
 ^alle d^attente he meets a stalwart young Englishman with a fair 
 moustache and a silky beard.
 
 RETUEN OP THE PIRST-BOllX. 27 
 
 " Captain Hugh Goldthorpe ? " the little man says, tentatively 
 rubbing his hands and grinning again. 
 
 " That's my name," answers the individual so addressed ; "and 
 what might you want with me ? " 
 
 " There's a lady close by wlio would just have one moment's 
 conversation with you." 
 
 Hugh's thoughts revert to his mother and Magdalen Hill. 
 Could they have come to Paris to meet him ? 
 
 " A lady ! where is she ? " he cries out eagerly. 
 
 "Yonder," answers the messenger, and points to where the 
 lady who has despatched him stands, her back turned, and 
 caressing her little spaniel. 
 
 The loving eyes of Hugh could see at a glance that this was 
 neither Lady Goldthorpe nor Magdalen Hill. Whom could 
 it be ? He knew scarcely any one in Paris, and certainly he had 
 no female acquaintances in that capital. He laughed, and looked 
 at his watch. 
 
 "It's twenty-two minutes past seven," he says; "I've not 
 much time to talk to a lady. Does she know me, and how long 
 will she keep me ? '' 
 
 "She knows you perfectly well, and she won't detain you an 
 instant," the shabby messenger replies. 
 
 With another laugh, thinking there must be some mistake, 
 gallant Captain Hugh advances to a lady, takes off his hat, and, 
 with a low bow, asks in French of what service he can be to 
 her. 
 
 "The lady speaks English," remarks the shabby little man, 
 with the most peculiar grin he has yet given. 
 
 The lady turns round, raises her veil, and looks Captain Hugh 
 Goldthorpe full in the face. He starts back with something very 
 like a cry of horror. 
 
 " Merciful Heavens ! " he exclaims, " it is Mrs. Armytage ! " 
 
 But time and the express-train will wait for no man. The bell 
 rings. The cry of " Frenes vos places — en voiture " is heard. 
 The passengers rush through the open doors of the Salle cTattente 
 on to the platform. A stalwart young man, with a thick beard 
 and moustache, hurriedly opens the door of a carriage, sees a 
 furred pelisse and a Eussia-leather despatch-box lying on one
 
 28 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMO^. 
 
 seat, and jumps in. Doors are slammed, a shrill whistle is audible, 
 aud the Calais express starts. 
 
 On that selfsame evening of the 27th of December, shortly 
 before midnight,'' an appalling accident happened to the express 
 train from Paris. Close to a station called Armentieres, between 
 Arras and Hazebrouck, the engine ran off the rails and into a 
 luggage-train going up the line. Both trains came into dire col- 
 lision. The damage was tremendous, the carnage awful. Seven 
 persons were killed and nearly thirty frightfully injured. 
 
 When assistance had been procured, the labourers and police 
 who had hastened to the scene of the catastrophe proceeded to 
 extricate the dead and dying from the shattered ruins of the 
 passenger train. One carriage was found positively crushed to 
 pieces, and a full hour elapsed before it could be ascertained 
 whether any traveller lay buried beneath its fragments. At last 
 the task was accomplished, and a doleful spectacle presented 
 itself. One corpse was found ; but it was so awfully disfigured, 
 so crushed and pounded and mashed and battered and gashed, as 
 to have scarcely any human semblance left. Of the countenance, 
 indeed, there remained positively nothing that could lead to the 
 discovery of its identity. 
 
 '^Hien dans les poclies ;^^, nothing in the pockets save Prench 
 and Euglish money, and his watch, marked "Benson, London, 
 55,304," the chief of the station remarks, with a melancholy 
 shake of the head, after such dreadful superficial examination as 
 was possible had taken place of the dead thing's garments. " Stay, 
 what is this beside the cadavre? " 
 
 The assistants turned their lanterns to the spot pointed out by 
 the inspector. Close to the side of the corpse, drenched with 
 blood, but quite intact, they found a despatch-box covered with 
 Eussia leather, and a pelisse lined throughout with rich sable fur. 
 The leathern case was locked ; but in the side pocket of the pelisse 
 was a morocco pocket-book, which being examined was found to 
 contain a packet of letters, with the English and Maltese post- 
 marks, addressed to Captain Hugh Goldthorpe, H.E.I.C.S. ; and 
 a passport five years old, covered with visas, in which the principal 
 Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of her Britannic Majesty
 
 RETURN OF THE FIRST-BORN. 29 
 
 requested all authorities, civil and military, to allow free passage, 
 and afford assistance in case of need, to Captain Hugh Gold- 
 thorpe, captain in the service of the Honourable East India Com- 
 pany, travelling abroad. 
 
 " U ti'y a plus de doute^'' said the inspector, with a melancholy 
 shrug of the shoulders. " That mass of bloody clay must be the 
 captain. Pauvre enfant ! And he has a mother, perhaps, Id-has, 
 in England."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LA DAilE Atr PEEMIEE. 
 
 The Eue GraBcle-des-Petites-Maisons runs at right angles from 
 the Boulevard Pompadour to the Place Dubarry. Are any further 
 particulars needed to tell you that the thoroughfare just named is 
 in the very centre of fashionable Paris ? But you may be exigent. 
 Therefore, let it be also hinted that, branching from the Eue 
 Grande-des-Petites-Maisons, runs that well-known arcade full of 
 old curiosity dealers, jewellers, and print-sellers, the Passage 
 Agnes-Sorel. Ton are scarcely a stone's throw, either, from the 
 Hue Diane-de-Poictiers, which has for termination the Cite La 
 Valliere; and, parallel to the Eue Grande, stretches the great, 
 teeming Faubourg Ste. Predegonde, the chosen mart of silk- 
 mercers and antique furniture sellers. This being all duly 
 mapped down, you are now recommended to take your Galignani's 
 Guide, and find out the Eue Grande-des-Petites-Maisons if 
 you can. 
 
 It is a street of the very newest, and belonging wholly to new 
 Prance. The old site, once occupied by those quiet, sombre, 
 narrow thoroughfares, the Eue - des - Bons - Epiciers, the Eue 
 Cherche-cinq-francs, and the Garrefour-des-vieilles-parapluies, had 
 been cleared shortly after the revolution of '48, to form the 
 approaches to a certain Golden House of Nero, which had been 
 centuries a-building. The Eue Grande appertains, stucco and 
 soul, to the fresh dynasty. No grim hotels, eiitre cour et jardin, 
 as in -the Paubourg St. Germain, tenanted by fossil legitimists, 
 whose hearts are in the highlands of Prohsdorff, and who call the 
 proprietor therefore Henri Cinq, are to be found in the Eue 
 Grande. It is disfigured by no shabby maisons menMees, or 
 tenth-rate hotels, smelling all day long of cabbage-soup. It is 
 debased by no mean cremeries, greengrocers, or gargoUe restau-
 
 LA DAME AU PREMIER. 31 
 
 rants. No ; the street is long and -wide, and clean and comely, 
 gas-lit, well-paved, full of new, liaudsome, dazzling white houses, 
 with green bliads, with plate-glass windows, with veined and 
 varnished doors, or else with entrance-gates in elaborate iron 
 filagree. Its railings are of gilt bronze, and its door-steps of 
 granite. The houses all seem to be striving to effect a compromise 
 between solid English comfort and flimsy French luxury; but 
 they are altogether as unlike the old mansions of Bourbon or 
 Orleanist Paris as a snug little remise rolling swiftly up the 
 Avenue Marigny is unlike the lumbering old coitcous that used to 
 creep to Versailles and St. Cloud. I'or a new Paris has sprung 
 up over the water ; a Lutetia that has knockers to its doors ; 
 partakes of lunch — sometimes, it must be admitted, spelt 
 "laounch;" rides in pill-box broughams and Hansom cabs; 
 stares, eye-glass on cheek, out of the casements of clubs, instead 
 of sipping barley-syrup at a marble table outside a cafe-door; and 
 has recently Gallicised " hlackballer,'" as a verb signifying "to 
 exclude;" bets at its Tattersall's ; reads its BelVs Life and its 
 city article, rigs its m.arket and posts its ponies iu the purlieus of 
 the Bourse. Paris est morf — the old, the witty, the polite ; vive 
 Paris the new, the impudent, the brazenfaced, the speculative ! 
 But vice and frivolity are undying, and Paris is still as vicious and 
 as frivolous as ever. 
 
 In 1819 the Rue Grande-des Petites-Maisons had not attained 
 the imperial splendour it now enjoys, Cassar was not yet emperor. 
 He scarcely was dictator, and every day of his tenure of power he 
 was badgered, well nigh to the death, by politicians of every 
 degree. In 1849 the Eue Grande smelt of scarcely dried cement 
 and fresh paint. It had not received the impress of imperialism. 
 At the present time, on reference to the Almanach des vingt-cinq^ 
 milles Adresses, I find that it is tenanted by one Grand Eefereu- 
 dary, two auditors of the Cour des Comptes, one Austrian Arch- 
 duchess, one Moldo-Wallachian Kaimakan, and at least a dozen 
 female celebrities of the Parisian minor theatres, whose individual 
 salaries average about thirty shillings a week, and who certainly 
 do not spend less than a hundred thousand francs per annum, 
 each and every one of them. Unless I am very much mistaken, 
 too, the Eue Grande-des-Petites-Maisons contains the charming
 
 •32 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 little Pompeian house of tlie Princess liostolka, with " Salve " 
 on the pavement of the vestibule, and " Cave canem^^ on the wall, 
 and " Hie Icstantur Lares''^ over the porch ; and all the rest of it. 
 Likewise the sumptuous hotel of M. Israel Portesac des Trois 
 Chapeaux, millionnaire of Marseilles, formerly of the Temple, 
 dealer in ancient garments, and genealogically of Judea ; but 
 lately, alas! of Mazas, and now, I know not of what Maison 
 centrale of detention and correction. Finally, I think I discover 
 in the Eue Grande the gorgeous bachelor quarters of M. Eoguet 
 de la Poguerie, member of the Council of State, journalist of 
 Napoleonic tendencies, formerly deputy for the department of the 
 Haute-Dou, and member of the Academie des jeux floraux of 
 Eascaille-sur-le-Neve. In 18 iO there was no Rue Grande to 
 boast such illustrious occupants. Plain Israel Portesac bought 
 and sold old cocked hats, and was not above dealing, occasionally, 
 in the furry robes of departed rabbits; and simple Jeannot 
 Eoguet was a doctor's boy in his native town of Eascaille, vigor- 
 ously pounding medicaments in a mortar. Still in 1849 the new 
 street was very fashionable, and very wealthy, and very gay. How 
 could it be otherwise when its dainty tenements were already the 
 residence of two Russian princesses, one English nobleman (Lord 
 Barrymore of Wharton, who had not been to England since the 
 revolution of '30, bought more pictures in a month than Mr. 
 Earrer could sell in a year, and whose morals were not quite 
 secure from the tittle-tattle of the English community in the 
 neighbouring Faubourg St. Honore) ; of the mysterious and 
 fabulously wealthy Grand Duke of Grimgribberstadt ; of Mes- 
 demoiselles Henriette Coquillard, Nini Cassemajou, Euphrosine 
 Turlupin, Aspasie Catin, Herminie Languedouce, Jenny Fagotin, 
 and other dramatic heroines ; and, to sum up, of La Dame af 
 Peemiee ? 
 
 La Dame au 'Premier, or, to come down to plain Saxon, the 
 Lady on the First Floor, lived at Number one, Eue Grande-des- 
 Petites-Maisons, and in a house seemingly large enough to lodge 
 a regiment of dragoons ; but having neither husband nor children 
 she contented herself with the first floor, and was but a lodger, 
 condescending to permit a banker to occupy the rez-de-chaussee, a 
 stockbroker to live on the second floor, a 'premier sujet of the
 
 LA DAME AU PllEMIER. 33 
 
 opera to be installed on the third, and any body who liked, and 
 could afford to pay an enormous rent for somewhat straitened 
 accommodation, to shelter themselves in the fourth or attic 
 story. The name of the lady on the first floor was Mrs. 
 Armytage. 
 
 She was a rich English widow, wliose husband had died in the 
 Indies. That the concierge knew well. The great Indies, he 
 called our Oriental Empire. To that functionary she was the 
 most adorable of her sex. A superb woman, he declared, pursing 
 in his lips. A queen-like creature. An angel. She showered 
 five-franc pieces on him. That woman should have the ribbon of 
 the Legion of Honour, or the prix Montliyon, opined the concierge. 
 She did not give anything to the poor: they are always in the 
 way, ces yens, those poor (muttered the concierge), but she was 
 liberal, nay, munificent to him, to the postmen, to her servants, to 
 her tradespeople. She received the very best society — the A^ery 
 best of the semi-imperial court of the Elysee Bourbon, the 
 plutocracy of the Chaussee d'Antin, the most distinguished 
 illustrations of tlie world of the Bourse, the Palais, the Green- 
 room, the Republic of Letters, aud the Jockey Club. The 
 Eaubourg St. Germain stood aloof from lier ; for had not 
 Madame proclaimed her enthusiastic adhesion to Bonapartism ? 
 Was not her bed-chamber hung with green velvet, powdered with 
 Napoleonic bees ? Did she not wear an eagle in diamonds in her 
 blonde tresses ? The Eaubourg St. Germain, in its dynastic 
 sense, stayed away from the Eue Grande, and the fascinating 
 first-floor lodger thereof, and was not missed ; but many a son 
 and heir of the Eaubourg, many a haughty young vicomte, with 
 more quarterings in his scutcheon than thousands of francs in his 
 purse ; many a wrinkled old chevalier or parchment-fiaced Vidame, 
 with the cross of St. Louis at his button-hole, and the memory of 
 the dear wicked old times when Charles the Tenth was only the 
 Comte d'Artois, in his heart, stole away from the crumbling 
 quarter of Divine Eight to bask in the smiles of Madame on the 
 first floor. Her salons were crowded to the vestibule every 
 evening. The ladies and gentlemen of the English community 
 before named came from the Eaubourg St. Honore to eat, and 
 drink, and sing, and dance, and play. The gentlemen were in
 
 34 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 raptures with the ricli Indian widow. The ladies were all but 
 unanimous in abusing her. She was a little too charming to be 
 admired by her own sex. On her part the lady on the first floor 
 frankly accepted all invitations from foreigners of distinction, and 
 contributed to the cUlices of many French, German, and Eussian 
 salons ; but she resolutely declined visiting, under any circum- 
 stances, her own countrymen and countrywomen. " Let them 
 come to me," she said, tossing her pretty head ; "I don't want ta 
 go to them." The English community had no excuse for cutting 
 Mrs. Armytage, or for sending her to Coventry ; for we English 
 carry a Coventry about with us wherever we go — whether it be to 
 the North Pole or the Andaman. Islands. There was no mystery 
 about her. Her conduct as a wife had been irreproachable. 
 Scores of yellow-visaged Auglo-Indians resident in the French 
 capital had known her husband, Major x\-rmytage, of the Queen's 
 army, who died of a fever at Goggerdebad in 18-±3. People knew 
 that she had a pension ; people surmised from her manner of 
 living that the major had died rich. She had resided alternately 
 in Paris, London, and Brighton during the seven years of her 
 widowhood, keeping open house everywhere, receiving the cream 
 of society, but never returning visits. "Why should the English 
 ladies of the Faubourg and the Cite Beaujou be continually 
 girding at her, and yet be glad to rustle their flounces in tlie 
 grand suite of apartments where Mrs. Armytage reigned 
 supreme ? 
 
 The first floor in which she lived might have belonged to a 
 palace of the Arabian Nights. Major Armytage must have shaken 
 the Indian pagoda-tree to some purpose, if all the fine things 
 belonging to his widow had come out of her jointure and the 
 pensionary liberality of the Honourable East India Company. 
 She lived en princesse. The suite of rooms on the first floor of 
 the Rue Grande comprised a vestibule (coloured marble, fresco 
 copy of Cephalus and Aurora, statuary, alabaster vases, &c.), a 
 dining-room (inlaid parquet, pictures of game by Mytens, boar- 
 hunt by Snyders, fruit after Eubens, insects by Abraham Mignon, 
 silver Venetian frames, Japanese bird-screen, &c.); a grand saloon 
 for receptions (needlework, tapestried furniture, ebony, mother-of- 
 pearl, consoles, gueridonSj cabarets full of porcelain, ceiling painted
 
 LA DAME AU PllEMIER. 85 
 
 by Diaz, carpet of velvet pile d''Auiusson, pianoforte by Pleyel, 
 harp by Erard, &c. «&c.) ; a little drawing-room (pink yilk and 
 malachite, Turkish scenes by Decamps, aquarelles by Eugene 
 Lamy, statuettes by Pradier, &c.) ; a delicious boudoir (white and 
 gold, select library in alternate vellum and crimson morocco bind- 
 ings, stained-glass "windows, porcelain door-panels, aquarium, 
 miniature conservatory, aviary, priedieu in carved oak, every 
 conceivable variety of arm-chair, ottoman, divan, sofa, tabouret, 
 dormeuse, causeuse, and houdeuse, and the entire apartment not 
 much bigger than a butler's pantry, &c. &c. &c.). Einally, there 
 vras my lady's own chamber, the cliamhre-a-couclier, — remember 
 that we are in Paris, and that there is consequently no impro- 
 priety in alluding to a lady's sleeping apartment, — with the famous 
 green velvet hangings, powdered with golden bees, and a bed in 
 carved rosewood and gold standing in an alcove ; quilt of eider- 
 down enclosed in apple-green brocade; gauze curtains; a plenitude 
 of mirrors ; floor of polished oak, inlaid, with rugs of lion and 
 tiger skins ; Beauty's altar in the sliape of a toilet-table ; infinite 
 trifles from Eroment Meurice and Tahans'; tiny arsenal of pistols, 
 damascened sabres, poignards, and fowling-pieces, — an odd fancy 
 for a lady's chamber, but they were perhaps trophies belonging to 
 the defunct major, — and massive Elizabethan wardrobe. The 
 bed-chamber was, according to continental custom, thrown open 
 on reception nights, and, lighted up by scores of wax-tapers, 
 produced sensations of delight in the spectator, which frequently 
 approached frenzy. 
 
 It is time to send the upholsterer away, and bid the broker's 
 man close his inkhorn and pocket his inventory. Mrs. Armytage 
 is on her way home even as I write, and it might be dangerous to 
 be detected in enacting the part of Paul Pry in her apartments. 
 There is just time to let you know that the valetaille, the inferiors 
 of Mrs. Armytage's household, had their quarters, as beseemed 
 their degree, on the same vast first floor of No. 1, Rue Grande- 
 des-Petites-Maisons. Where the kitchen was situated remained 
 a mystery ; but there must have been one on the premises, else 
 how could M. Estragon (formerly of the Chimborazan embassy), 
 the accomplished chef oi the lady on the first floor, have conqocted 
 those delicate little dinners, those exquisite little suppers, for
 
 ,36 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 whicli he and Mrs. Armytage were alike renowned, and whicli liad 
 extorted tlie admiration of the most exacting epicures of Paris — 
 epicures before whose searching gaze the butler of the Trois 
 Preres faltered, and the waiters of the Cafe de Paris trembled. 
 Mrs. Armytage's wines had a special celebrity of their own. She 
 had a dry champagne which made fools witty and ugly women 
 look handsome. She had a sparkling Burgundy which seemed to 
 sing songs of its own accord as it danced in the glass. She had a 
 Komane'e Conti, after drinking which authors rushed home and 
 wrote thrilling romances, and M. Israel des Trois Chapeaux added 
 hundreds of thousands of francs to his fortune by bold speculations 
 on the Jiausse. 
 
 For servants there were M. Estragon, erst of the Chimborazan 
 embassy, cook and maltre d'hutel as aforesaid — of foolish fat scul- 
 lions, I say nothing ; Mademoiselle Eeine, lady's maid, tall, 
 supple, and discreet ; Monsieur Benoit, valet de cJiambre, butler 
 and factotum, grave, solemn, silent, clean shaven, clad in raven 
 black, and on gala occasions appearing in black shorts and silk 
 stockings. When the Grand Duke of G-rimgribberstadt came — 
 he was expected on the very night of which I am speaking — M. 
 Benoit appeared with a slender silver chain round his neck, 
 ruffles, and a slim mourning sword by his side. The ladies of the 
 English community sneered at what they stigmatised as ridiculous 
 ostentation. Mrs. Armytage laughed — she was always laughing 
 — and declared that Benoit had served crowned heads in his time, 
 and that if she did not allow him to wear his sword and chain 
 on state occasions he would give her warning. She did not even 
 resent the satirical inquiry of the young Marquis Boissec de 
 Puitssec, as to whether her valet de chamhre was in the employ of 
 the Pompes Eunebres, — and indeed his ceremonial costume did 
 not ill resemble that of the head undertaker at a Erench funeral. 
 This was the same M. de Boissec de Puitssec who was shortly 
 afterwards slain in a duel in the Bois de Vincennes by M. Hector 
 de Viellesouche, formerly of the Gardes du Corps, on a quarrel 
 arising from a bet as to the number of Mrs. Armytage's flaxen 
 ringlets. Boissec said there were fifteen on one side and fourteen 
 on the other ; Viellesouche betted that the numbers were equal. 
 They could not agree about payment; so they quarrelled and
 
 LA DAME AU PREMIER. 37 
 
 fought, and he died, and she — the lady on the first floor — laughed 
 louder tlian ever. 
 
 I have omitted to mention one domestic of Mrs. Armytage's 
 following ; yet Hercule Moustachu deserves a word. He was 
 the lady's cliasseur, and wore a green pelisse elaborately embroi- 
 dered, a gigantic cocked hat and plumes, Hessian boots, and an 
 ivory-handled hunting-knife in his belt. Again the English com- 
 munity of the Faubourg had something to sneer at. " What does 
 she want with that rufBauly creature, six feet high, with whiskers 
 like blacking-brushes, and his absurd masquerade dress ? " they 
 kindly asked. Mrs. Armytage shrugged her pretty shoulders and 
 laughed. Moustachu was her chasseur, she simply remarked, and 
 wore the ordinary uniform of his station. Go to the hotel of the 
 Chimborazan ambassador, of the Baratarian minister, or of the 
 Ashantee envoy even, and you would find chasseurs similarly 
 accoutred. He was a droll creature certainly, she admitted, with 
 his cocked hat and his big whiskers ; and she laughed till her 
 ringlets shook like the leaves in a summer's breeze. She was but 
 a mite of a woman, and Moustachu was her protection. He sat 
 on the box of her brougham beside the coachman ; and when she 
 walked abroad on the boulevard, or in the Bois de Boulogne, he 
 followed her, bearing a great golden-tipped staff of office, colossal, 
 imposing, and severe. In the winter he wore a pelisse of bearskin, 
 which made him look, to say the least, tremendous and appalling. 
 Great men — the very greatest — have their foibles, and Moustachu's 
 weakness was absinthe. When excited by that stimulant, he was 
 at first ferocious and the terror of peaceful wineshop-keepers, but 
 would ultimately subside into the tears of happy infancy. The 
 malicious whispered that Moustachu had once been a giant at the 
 fairs ; and sarcastic M. de Boissec (only a week before the duel) 
 declared that he recognised the chasseur as a former assistant to a 
 travelling quack doctor, and that he had seen him in a scarlet toga 
 and a Eoman helmet grinding the organ in the dickey of a phae- 
 ton, while Dulcamara, his master, vaunted his pills and potions to 
 the simpletons around. 
 
 " AVhat a droll idea ! " cried Mrs. Armytage, laughing, when 
 some kind friend— I think it was an English lady of the com- 
 munity — repeated ]M. de Boissec' s words to her.
 
 38 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 The Englisli community — the female part of it, at least — had 
 once endeavoured to put down Mrs. Armytage. There was posi- 
 tively nothing against her, — not a speck on the ermine of her fair 
 fame, — not a flaw in her diadem of good repute, — not the tiniest 
 peg whereon to hang scandal ; but they tried to put her down 
 notwithstanding. "That serpent must be crushed," said Lady 
 Eaglesborough emphatically ; and when Lady Eaglesborough said 
 a thing, important results generally followed. She was the leader 
 of the serious (Anglican) world of Paris, was very nearly as tall 
 as Moustachu, had four daughters almost as tall as herself, whom, 
 rumour said, she caned, and was altogether a woman not to be 
 trifled with. Mrs. Cowpon, the banker's wife (Cowpon, Pecule, 
 Eilicoteaux, et C'^., Eue St. Lazare), entered into an oflensive and 
 defensive alliance with Lady Eaglesborough ; Mrs. St. Leger 
 Levins, about whom scandal had more than once, and with some 
 appearance of reality, been whispered, petitioned to be allowed to 
 join the league ; the Honourable Mrs. Dipton, whose husband led 
 her such a sad life ; the two Miss M'Caws whose father made that 
 unfortunate mistake about the trust-money : gathered round Lady 
 Eaglesborough. The serpent must be crushed, they all agreed. 
 The terms "basilisk," "cockatrice," "crocodile," and "syren," 
 were freely applied to Mrs. Armytage. She was to be cut, repu- 
 diated, ostracised, blackballed, sent to that terrible Coventry 
 more dreaded than Norfolk Island ever was. The news of the 
 conspiracy soon reached the widow of the Eue Grande-des-Petites- 
 Maisous, and she laughed for at least twelve consecutive minutes. 
 " They crush me ! " she repeated, almost with a shriek of merri- 
 ment. " The insensates ! Ton may tell them," she continued, 
 turning to Mr. Simperleigh, of the British embassy, who was her 
 informant as to the hostile intentions of the Faubourg, " that if I 
 hear any more of this nonsense. Lord Barrymore shall produce 
 all Mrs. St. Leger Levius's letters to him, written while her hus- 
 band was in Jamaica. The plain reasons why Erank Dipton shot 
 Limself shall be put down in writing by my man Sims. I've got 
 the newspaper report of the bankruptcy of that wicked old Dr. 
 M'Caw, who was a schoolmaster at Greenock, and starved his 
 pupils, the wretch, besides spending his ward's trust-money. 
 Young Mistigris, the artist of the Hue de Boheme, sketches capi-
 
 LA. DAME AU PREMIER. 39 
 
 tally in pen and ink, and lie sliall draw me sii,cli a caricature of 
 Lady Eaglesborough caning lier grenadier daughters ; and as for 
 Mrs. Cowpou, all Paris shall know how she pretended to go to 
 Aix-la-Chapelle for her health, went on to Baden-Baden instead, 
 lost five thousand francs at roulette, — on a Sunday night, Mr. 
 Simperleigh, — and, not daring to face her red-headed husband, had 
 to borrow money of Captain Lovelace to pay her hotel-bill and 
 ■come home. They crush me, indeed ! Unless ample apologies 
 are made to me, I'll tear off all their false fronts and have half 
 their young men in Clichy in a fortnight." 
 
 Mrs. Arraytage did not insist upon the apology, but the con- 
 spiracy melted at once into thin air. Lady Eaglesborough called 
 on her to beg a subscription for the Destitute Couriers and 
 Footmen out-of-place Eelief Fund, and publicly declared that she, 
 Mrs. Armytage, was a person of superior attainments and great 
 energy of character. Mrs. St. Leger Levius went to spend six 
 months at Bagneres de Bigorres ; and when next old Lord Barry- 
 more of Wharton dined en petit comitc with the lady of the first 
 floor, they both laughed till the vermeil and porcelain on the 
 damask clinked again. His Lordship liked to dine in the Eue 
 Grande-des-Petites-Maisons. He was to have dined there on the 
 27th of December, 1849, but, having a prior engagement with the 
 Orand Duke of Grimgribberstadt, sent an apology, and promised 
 to look in during the evening. For Lord Barrymore of "Wharton 
 belonged to the old school, and liked to dine as well as sup. 
 
 The half-past seven train express had started a good hour ere 
 Mrs. Armytage left the vicinity of the Northern Eailway ter- 
 minus. "My man Sims" — the diminutive personage of ferret- 
 like appearance — had quitted her, and Mrs. Armytage was alone. 
 She had not even Moustachu the cliasseur to protect her ; but she 
 was a woman of great mental resources, and feared nothing. She 
 hailed a little voiture hourgeoise and bade the driver proceed to the 
 Boulevard Pompadour ; and just as the multitude of clocks scat- 
 tered all over her apartments were tinkling out the hour of nine, 
 Mrs. Armytage was in her cahinet de toilette, arraying herself for 
 a festal evening. It was a fete every night with Mrs. Armytage'. 
 Her sands of life were diamond dust, and Time gave her his 
 arm with dainty politeness, and conducted her along a path all
 
 40 THE SEVEN SONS OE MAMMON. 
 
 strewn with flowers. How old was she ? You might liave asked 
 yourself the question a hundred times looking at her as' she sat 
 on one of the luxurious couches iu her boudoir waiting for her 
 guests, and have reaped only bewilderment and perplexity from 
 your inquiries. As a rule, you are aware, it is difficult to tell the 
 ages of blondes. Their complexion keeps ; wrinkles and crows' 
 feet are slow to appear, and their fui'rows cast no deep shadows ; 
 their hair rarely becomes grey. Fair women of fifty may often 
 pass for their own daughters, unless iudeed they become fat, 
 when the secret is at once disclosed. Fat is fatal to either sex, 
 and under any circumstances. Mrs. Armytage had no tendency 
 to embonpoint. She was the rather svelte, slim, tiny, slender. 
 You saw none of her bones, but you did not see too much of her 
 flesh. Her shoulders were much whiter than the whitest opera 
 cloak she could wear. Her eyes were very large and very blue, 
 and they laughed at you to the full as much as her mouth did. 
 As to the laugh itself, it was almost incessant, but it was neither 
 a simper nor a snigger. You know the blondes who laugh in that 
 manner, and who are, for the most part, utter and hopeless sim- 
 pletons. Mrs. Armytage's laugh was by no means a hollow one — 
 nothing like that dreadful cavernous " he-hee " of the actress on 
 the stage — the laugh which is twin-sister to the stereotyped grin 
 of the ballet-dancer. It was not a jocund laugh ; it was not a 
 " bitter " laugh (risus sardonicus) ; and the merriment in which 
 this lady indulged was by no means contagious. Very few people 
 felt inclined to laugh with, or at, or after the laughing lady of the 
 Rue Grande-des-Petites-Maisons. " She is a mermaid whose mother 
 "was a laughing hyena," said Lord Barrymore of Wharton of the 
 lady, with whom he was so fond of dining. 
 
 AU this brings us no nearer the solution of the problem as to 
 Mrs. Armytage's age. She was not tlie kind of person to let you 
 into the secret herself. There were ladies and gentlemen in plenty 
 who came to her saloons, and who had known her, some for ten and 
 some for fifteen years ; but they were no closer to certainty than 
 her most recent acquaintances. She had always looked young. 
 She always had that fresh bloom on her cheeks, the bloom 
 which didn't look like rouge, and which I don't believe was rouge. 
 There were no fossettes in her neck, no creases beneath her eyes^
 
 LA DAME AU PREMIER. 41 
 
 not a toucli of the Enemy's finger round the muscles of her 
 mouth. There she sat on the couch in the boudoir, radiant in 
 sea-green silk and pink bows and point-lace, and blaziug with 
 diamonds and rubies, and shaking her blonde ringlets as she 
 played with and laughed at her little Blenheim spaniel. 
 
 She had dined alone, and in this same boudoir. M. Estragon 
 had taken the same pains with her solitaiy repast as though ic 
 had been a banquet for fifteen. Moustachu the chasseur brought 
 the dishes to the door, but he was not suffered to pass the magic 
 portal. M. Benoit, in full dress, himself, served the lady on the 
 first floor. She tasted a little puree, a morsel of turhot a la creme, 
 a tiny corner of vol-atc-vent, a delicate slice of cTievreuil en poivrade ; 
 but she ate up the whole of a fat little bird in a very nimble and cat- 
 like manner, and crunched its succulent bones with great apparent 
 gusto. Wines were presented to her in due course, the still and 
 sparkling, the vintages of Bordeaux and of the Cote d'Or. She 
 barely put her lips to the glittering crystal, but she drank a little 
 glass of Curacoa after her thimblefull of black coffee served up 
 in a tiny cup of eggshell porcelain — real Sevres, you may rest 
 assured. 
 
 So she sat and played with the lap-dog, laughing at his gambols, 
 and, anon, took down a daintily-bound novel — ^it was one of the 
 admired works of M. Pigault-le-Brun, I am afraid, although on 
 the back the volume was lettered (Euvres de Hacine. She sat and 
 laughed, and read and waited, but not long. Ere ten o'clock the 
 salons were full of company. It was the most refined of Liberty 
 Halls, and the guests wandered about pretty much as they pleased ; 
 only they were expected to take their departure at midnight. 
 Special invitations were issued to the favoured few who partook 
 of Mrs. Armytage's famous suppers. 
 
 I look back years, and stroll in spirit across the years through 
 the dazzling chambers. I see the groups at the card-tables, piles 
 of napoleons by them, silently but eagerly playing ccarte or 
 baccara. Lansquenet was never heard of in this particular house 
 of the Eue Grande. Eespectable English fogies played whist 
 sometimes for five-franc points. The starched married ladies of 
 the English community generally kept together, and whispered 
 disparagement of the hostess. " That horrid gambling " they
 
 43 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 were chiefly severe against. Young English lads were warned bj 
 prudent mammas against T)accara, and, stealing into the contiguous 
 saloon, began immediately to play at the pleasing game denounced; 
 young English ladies were warned, by the same anxious parents, 
 not to enter into flirtations with those " dangerous Frenchmen ; " 
 but the peril of the Gallic element was overrated, so far at least 
 as the daughters of Albion were concerned. Plenty of French 
 ■dandies came from the Jockey Club, the Faubourg St. Germain, 
 and the Cafe de Paris ; but, as the knowledge of the English 
 language possessed by the majority of their number was infini- 
 tesimal, their active flirtation with les blanches oneess did not extend 
 beyond ogling the fair ones, and twirling their moustaches at them 
 in a fascinatiuo; and enfraffino; manner. 
 
 I look back across the years, and see the boudoir whose thres- 
 hold only the elite of the company dared, by a tacit kind of un- 
 derstanding, to pass. It is there the lady on the first floor by 
 preference remains. She glides in and about all her rooms and all 
 her company, and performs all the duties of hospitality with irre- 
 proachable ease and grace ; but her home is in the boudoir, and 
 there chiefly she sits enthroned. On one divan you may see the 
 rigid form and coal-black beard of the Grand Duke of Grimgrib- 
 berstadt. He was reigning Grand Duke once ; but political com- 
 plications, culminating, to tell truth, in the summary burning of 
 his palace about his ears, caused his separation from an ungrateful 
 people, and the enforced abdication of a remarkably prickly crown. 
 His Eff'ulgency — such is his Teutonic title — is very wealthy and 
 very peculiar. It is said that his cheeks are painted, and that his 
 beard is dyed. It is reported that he teeps the whole of his for- 
 tune in ready money between the mattress and the palliasse of his 
 bed ; and that around his couch is a terrible assortment of spring- 
 guns, and twenty-bladed poniards that dart forth at the slightest 
 touch like the instruments of a cupper. It is rumoured also that 
 he will trust no servant of his to prepare his meals — having a 
 dread of poison — and that his daily repasts are sent to him hot 
 and hot each day from a different restaurant. Certain it is that 
 the Grand Duke of Grimgribberstadt is a mysterious-looking 
 personage, and that his eye is an evil one. He has a cluster of 
 diamond rings on every finger. The buttons of his waistcoat are
 
 LA DAME AU PREMIER. 43 
 
 brilliants of the purest water. His studs iu rose diamonds are 
 prodigious. He is the only man in Europe who possesses an 
 orange tawny diamond, with, wonder of wonders, the Grand 
 Ducal arms of Grimgribberstadt engraved thereupon. He sits 
 rigid and superb, and blazing. His conversation is limited to one 
 topic, the Italian Opera, and, it must be further admitted to one 
 opera. The Barter of Seville. "■ Est-ce quon se fatigue jamais du 
 JBarUer?'^ — "Do we ever grow tired of the Barber? " — asks his 
 Effulgency, and poses you. Then he is silent for half an hour. 
 "Mais Vairde la Calomnie ! ^' he interposes clinchingly, when 
 something is said about evil speaking. Another half-hour of 
 silence elapses. Suddenly he rises, murmurs, " Buona sera,^' re- 
 calling the famous concerted piece in his beloved opera, and, 
 dislocating for one instant one of his cervical vertebrae, by which 
 it is understood that his Effulgency bows, he sails away, and is 
 conducted by M. Benolt, bearing waxen tapers, to his carriage — 
 that heavy vehicle with the panels and shutters said to be of iron 
 and shot-proof, and of which the two coal-black horses with the 
 silvered harness have been pawing the flags impatiently these two 
 hours. 
 
 About eleven, a little brougham drives up to the door of Num- 
 ber One. A tall footman jumps off" the box, darts upstairs, pulls 
 the crimson silk cord at Mrs. Armytage's door, says to the cTias- 
 seur, '^Madame la Baronne,^^ darts down-stairs again, flings open 
 the brougham door, cries " On attend Madame " to the inmate, 
 and hustles or carries, or pushes, — he seems to do it so rapidly, 
 — rather than conducts, a little ball of rich sable fur, surmounted 
 by a little sky-blue hood, up to the apartments of La Dame au 
 Bremier. Mademoiselle Eeine is in waiting, and unwinds the 
 little cocoon of sable and sky-blue. "With lightning rapidity you 
 see Mrs. Armytage in her boudoir, curtseying to a dumpy little 
 woman in black velvet and amethysts, with a towering plume on 
 her little head. She looks like Humpty Dumpty who has fallen 
 off" the wall and has been half submerged in an ink-bottle. The 
 company crowd about the silken hangings of the boudoir portal, 
 and listen with rapt attention while, in a deep contralto voice, the 
 little dumpy woman declaims something; it may be the grand 
 tirade from Mary Stuart, the Helas ! scene in Les Horaces, the
 
 44 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 " Es ist niclit lancje'^ speecli from William Tell, the Tinibaliers of 
 Victor Hugo, or the ^' Pour nous conserver purs ^' ]}assage from 
 Lamartine's Jocelyn. She declainis, perorates ; there is a burst of 
 applause ; Mrs. Armytage curtseys again ; fifty people say what 
 they do not in the least mean ; the dumpy little woman hurries 
 away again, is robed by Mademoiselle Eeine, caught up again by 
 her footman, popped into her carriage, and rattled away to the 
 far end of the Eue de Lille, where she will favour the guests of 
 La Princesse de Chinon-Croisy with a similar burst of elocution. 
 Mrs. Armytage's guests burst out laughing, and whisper, 
 "La Baroniie is madder than ever." This is the Baronne de 
 Biffinbach. Her spouse, M. c'e Bifl&nbach, formerly Hof Kam- 
 merer to the Landgrave of Sachspflugen-Hamstein, is an ento- 
 mologist, and passes the best part of his existence in the society 
 of spiders, alive and dead. The Baronue has a rage for elocu- 
 tion. She will probably declaim at five or six houses this evening. 
 Last year her lune was for fresco-painting, and she insisted on 
 being suspended in a basket to the ceiling of her dining-room 
 while she executed Cupids and Muses thereupon. Some wet 
 plaster got into the Baroness's eye one day, and she abandoned 
 Art for Eloquence. She has had manias for animal magnetism, 
 for ascetic devotion, for lansquenet, for St. Simonianism, and 
 for tricks of legerdemain ; but she has always been a very chari- 
 table, kind-hearted woman, and every body likes her. 
 
 That grand old man, so grave, so dignified, so venerable in his 
 flowing white locks, with such an exquisite hand, such a symmetrical 
 foot — le heau vieillard — is M. Laplace de Fontenelle the Acade- 
 mician ? Kot iu the least. Yonder mean-looking little old man, 
 dabbing his forehead with a blue cotton pocket-handkerchief, is the 
 illustrious writer and savant you mean. "Well, it must be my 
 Lord Barrymore. You are wrong again. His lordship is the jovial, 
 red-faced gentleman with the white teeth and the black whiskers 
 who is bending over Mrs. Armytage, and slyly chuckling over some 
 story she is telling him. The grand and dignified patriarch is no 
 less than old Monsieur I'ourbel— Papa Toiu-bel — Nini Fourbel, 
 the wags of the small satirical journals call him. He has been a 
 chemist and druggist, and has made a fortune out of lollipops to 
 cure catarrh. He has been a stockbroker, and made another
 
 LA DAME AU PREMIER. 45 
 
 fortune out of the hausse and the haisse. He has been manager 
 of the Opera, and made fortune number three out of the throat 
 of Duprez and the ankles of innumerable corypMes. He has 
 been proprietor of the Eepublico-Monarchico-Orleanico-Bona- 
 partist journal the Girouette. He started the Carpentras and 
 Brives-la-Gaillarde Eailway, and realised early. He sold, at 
 premium, all his shares in the Docks Elagabale, the Socicte 
 anonyme des 3Iarchands de Ilarrons cJiauds, the Compagnie 
 d' Assurances contre la Migraine, and other notable speculations. 
 Had he resided in England, Sir Jasper Goldthorpe would have 
 been proud of his acquaintance. This lucky old man might have 
 rivalled the great Hebrew M. Portesac des Trois Chapeaux in 
 wealth, but for his insatiable devotion to eating and drinking. 
 The magnificence of his dinners is only equalled by that of his 
 breakfasts. In oysters alone he spends a princely revenue. He 
 is the one gourmet who has ortolans on his table all the year 
 round. " To others the fame of Croesus, of Ouvrard, or Paris- 
 Duvernay," he says, proudly : " I am the emulator of LucuUus 5 
 I am the successor of Cambaceres. I would settle fifty tliousand 
 francs a year on the widow of the man who would consent to be 
 thrown into a fish-pond to feed my carp ; and were Yattel alive 
 he should be cook to Casserole Eourbel." 
 
 Back across the years, back till I can see the journalists, the 
 dandies, the political adventurers, the foreign counts, the finan- 
 ciers, the stock-jobbers, the painters and poets of a perturbed 
 period of transition and suspense. Things had not fallen into 
 their places in 1849, and every one wondered at the position in 
 which he found himself. Back ! I hear a voice, sonorous, solemn, 
 touching, wild almost in its searching tones, through the doorway 
 of the chamber where the grand piano is. Ah ! I know who this 
 is. The Princess Okolska is singing. " Princess, you must sing," 
 "Mrs. Armytage has said laughing ; " Society entreats this favour 
 from you." The Princess rises and goes to the piano. She is a 
 gaunt, bony woman, in an ill-fitting dress of tartan poplin, and a 
 head-dress made of gold coins of Oriental look. She has big 
 black eyes, and blue-black hair. Her husband, it is whispered, 
 helped to strangle a certain emperor, and she herself is reported 
 to be the daughter of a Circassian slave. She sings some strange
 
 46 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 ballad in an "unknown tongue. The song, at first monotonous and 
 faint, rises first to plaintive dolence, then to a passionate wail, 
 then to a sort of cry of rage and despair. " That woman has 
 been devoured by passions," says a journalist to a painter. At the 
 end of the song, the Princess Okolska faints away. She always 
 faints on these occasions. She is restored to consciousness, and 
 caressed and complimented, and has a glass of hot sugar and 
 orange-flower water brought her, in which, I am afraid, there 
 is something stronger than either of the ingredients above- 
 named. 
 
 This was the twenty-seventh of December, lS-i9. Seldom had 
 so brilliant a gathering been feeen in the Eue Grande-des-Petites- 
 Maisons, There were richer guests, perhaps, at that very moment 
 at a certain family party in Onyx Square, Tyburnia, London — a 
 party where a father and a mother, and a tall girl with a pale face, 
 were waiting ; but for I'ank, and talent, and wit, Mrs. Armytage's 
 visitors bad undoubtedly the superiority. And while the lights 
 shone brightly, and the music streamed in either brave house on 
 either side of the Channel, the Calais express was ploughing 
 through the night towards the shores of the cold and complain- 
 
 ing sea. 
 
 The majority of the company left, as was tbe custom, at mid- 
 night. After that came supper, of the richest and rarest, to the 
 chosen ones who remained. Songs were sung, arrowy jests flew 
 about, political intrigues were dissected, wicked anecdotes were 
 told. There was deep drinking ; there was deep pfay ; and Mrs. 
 Armytage laughed continually. 
 
 At last she was alone. The bed-chamber was being prepared 
 for her. Mademoiselle Eeine awaited her coming. She stood 
 with her white shoulders and her sea-green robe, and daintily 
 toasting one little foot at the embers that glowed on the polished 
 hearth. Tiny tongues of flame came out of the logs, as if to lick 
 her garment's hem in homage. The mirror on the velvet-hung 
 mantel reflected something else beside lustres and Sevres vases 
 and Buhl clock. It reflected a woman's face and yellow ringlets 
 and dancing gems. Something else, too. A face haggard and 
 pallid, eyes vengeful and terrible. 
 
 She struck her little hand on the mantel with violence enough
 
 LA DAME AU PREMIER. 47 
 
 to wound ifc. She looked angrily at her bruised wrist, and twisted 
 it in her other baud. She laughed no more. 
 
 "I would kill myself, if I dared," she muttered. "I am a& 
 beautiful now as I was four years since ; and he has spurned me, 
 spurned me again as he did before. I am richer than ever. There 
 is not a penny belonging to his wretched fivther but I could call it 
 mine; and he has spurned me. . . • But I will crush him; yes, 
 Hugh Goldthorpe," she continued,— and seeming to address a 
 locket which she took from her bosom, — " I will crush you, body 
 and soul, and the woman who is waiting for you yonder shall see 
 you no more." •^'^*** • 
 
 She made as though to kiss something inside the locket, which 
 she held open before her. But she closed the bauble with a 
 sudden click, and thrust it into her white breast ; and then Mrs. 
 Armytage went to bed. 
 
 She was breakfasting at noon the next day— breakfasting in her 
 little purple Morocco slippers and her morning wrapper of China 
 silk, when M. Benoit announced M. Sims. 
 
 M. Sims was as diminutive and as ferret-looking, but he looked 
 more excited than usual. 
 
 " Have you heard the news ?" 
 
 " AVhat news ?" the lady asked disdainfully. " That you smell 
 of tobacco, as you do always, and do now ? That is no news 
 to me." 
 
 " Tou are cross this morning, ma'am," Mr. Sims remarked, 
 shrugging his shoulders. " I have something here that wUl put 
 you in a better temper." 
 
 With trembling hands he unfolded a copy of that morning's 
 Girouefte, and read out : — 
 
 " Telegraphic despatch from Armentieres. Epouvantalle Sinistre oa the 
 Forthern Railway. Calais express came into collision with up luggage-train. 
 Thirty-seven persons killed and wounded. Among the sutferers has been recog- 
 nised by his papers the body of M. le Gapitaine Hugh Goldthorpe, officer in the 
 military service of the Honourable Company of the Oriental Indies, and son of 
 Sir Goldthorpe, Baronet, and member of the Chamber of Lords of Great Britain. 
 Further details will be given in our edition of the evening." 
 
 Mr. Sims had probably never in his life executed a translation 
 from the French with such rapidity. ]M"or, I should think, was 
 the recital of an appalling occurrence often received in so strange
 
 48 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 a manner as it was by Mrs. Armytage. It is a fact that sTie burst 
 out laughing, and laughed so long and so loudly that the Blenheim 
 spaniel, thinking that he too would be of the party, began to bark 
 in doggish merriment. 
 
 " Was there anything ever so fortunate ?" said the lady, at last 
 panting for breath. 
 
 "It is a joyful thing," responded Mr. Sims, rubbing his peaked 
 nose. 
 
 "There, Sims!" cried Mrs. Armytage, catching up her spaniel 
 and bestowing a kiss upon his snub nose, " You must go to the 
 Prefecture and get my passport vised. I start for England to- 
 night. I hope the train won't have another accident, and kill 
 poor little me. Ha! ha! ha!" 

 
 CHAPTER V. 
 OK A riELD, oe; a. ceoss, sable. 
 
 The blackest winter baked tbe eartb to stone ; and iu the fields 
 tbin spikes of grass just contrived to pierce the boar crust, naked 
 and rigid. It was a black frost. The roads, tbe kennels, the 
 pavements, tbe bare trees were dark and glossy. The roofs only 
 were white with frozen snow, and bad been so for weeks. 
 
 Strong handed Labour, frozen out of bread-earning, stalked 
 starving through the town ; wretched women whined and cowered, 
 but hungry men wandered scowling and with folded arms about 
 tbe shells of houses they should have been building. It was 
 winter everywhere, and Misery came abroad, forlorn and piteous. 
 Thousands were enjoying themselves on the glassy surface of the 
 park-waters, skating, and sliding, and shouting, and tumbling over 
 one another for joy ; but thousands more looked on from the 
 banks, silent, savage, and famished. Vast blocks of ice floated 
 down the river, and, collecting in creeks, ground up against each 
 other with sharp noises. News came from the country of trains 
 snowed-up, of whole flocks of sheep lost in drifts, of villages in the 
 Yorkshire wolds cut off from all communication with towns and 
 markets; of gullies between them choked with snow, of cattle 
 frost-bitten, villagers half-starving. The Old Year laid himself 
 down to die in an adamantine coffin, and the New Year was swad- 
 dled in icy bands. There was much feasting and merry-making 
 in rich men's houses ; yule-logs were burned, Christmas-trees 
 shaken ; dancing and singing were heard. The cold was not 
 severely felt in warmly-lined carriages ; and in thick-carpeted 
 drawing-rooms and bed-chambers thickly-curtained, the price of 
 fuel was not of much account. But in the narrow courts and 
 dens, and over the London border, and on the skirts of docks and 
 factory yards, and in the avenues of police courts, before the
 
 50 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 relieving ofHcer's strong door, and by the Union "Workhouse's 
 pitiless walls, Starvation and Destitution cowered in their rags, 
 and moaned their lack of common food, and warmth, and shelter, 
 and made the evil season more hideous to the view. 
 
 If you take a million-rich man, and put him naked and without 
 victuals or a roof to cover him, on a rock, and expose him to the 
 nipping frost and the January blast, it will not be long ere he 
 begins to shiver, and anon to howl in agony and despair ; and at 
 last he will crouch prone to his jagged bed and die. But in the 
 very centre of London, with his palaces and his vassals around 
 him, it is difficult for the rich man to feel the cold. On that bare 
 rock his millions in gold or crisp paper would not warm him, 
 unless haply he had needles and thread to sew the money-bags 
 together for raiment. When he is in London, however, the 
 money will buy furred robes and Wallsend coals, and sand-bags 
 to exclude the wind, and well-closed chariots to ride in, and 
 Welsh wigs to draw over his head, plush gloves to cover his 
 hands, and hot water bottles to put to his feet. Eailway rugs, 
 scalding soups and drinks, shawls and comforters, are all ready 
 for him and purchaseable. The theatres, the churches, the 
 counting-houses, the board-rooms, the marts and exchanges which 
 he frequents, have all their warming apparatus, and become snug 
 and cosy, 'No ; I cannot see how it is possible for the English 
 Dives to shiver, — were even Siberia brought to London, and the 
 North Pole set up iu the Strand in lieu of the Maypole which 
 once adorned that thoroughfiire. The milliners that serve Dives' 
 wives and daughters may sell as many fans for Christmas balls as 
 for Midsummer picnics ; and after Dives' New-year's feasts the 
 ice-creams and the ice-puddings are positively refreshing after the 
 spiced viands and generous wines. 
 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe was the richest of rich men. The quilt 
 of his bed might have been stuffed with bank-notes instead of 
 eider-down. He could have afforded, had he needed caloric, to 
 have burned one of his own palaces down, and warmed his hands 
 by the conflagration. From his warm bed-room, breakfast-room, 
 and study, his warm carriage took him, swathed in warm wrappers, 
 to the warm sauctum of his warm counting-house. His head 
 clerks wore respii-ators, and had muUigatawney soup - for lunch.
 
 ON A FIELD, or; A CROSSj SABLE. 51 
 
 The Times' City article ■o'as carefully ■wanned for lilin ere he 
 perused it. His messengers comforted themselves with alamode 
 beef and hot sausages and fried potatoes before roaring fires ; and, 
 ■when thev were despatched on errands, slipped into heated taverns 
 in little City lanes, where they hastily swallowed mugs full of 
 steaming egg-hot and cordialised porter. The only cold that could 
 Beemingly touch so rich a man as Sir Jasper Groldthorpe was a 
 cold in the head ; and what possets, white-wine wheys, gruels, 
 footbaths, doctors' prescriptions, and hot flannels, were there not 
 in readiness to drive catarrh away from him ! Lived there ia the 
 •whole realm of England one man or boy mad or desperate enough 
 to cast a snow-ball at the millionaire of Beryl Court ? I think 
 not. He was above the cold. It was street people only who 
 •were cold, just as the little princess asked the painter who came 
 to take her portrait whether it was not true that " only street- 
 people died." So Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, his sons and their 
 thrals and churls, their tributaries and feudatories, let the street- 
 people shiver as beseemed their degree, flinging them cheques and 
 sovereigns sometimes in their haughty unbending way, and went 
 on, warm and glowing, from a prosperous old year to a prosperous 
 new one, when suddenly a Hand of Ice, that thrilled them all to 
 the very bones and marrow, was laid just above the heart of 
 Mammon, and of his wife, and of his children. 
 
 It was the Hand of Death, and it touched each with a cold 
 pang, and went onwards, to touch some transiently, but to grasp 
 others without release. "Whoever felt its hghtest pressure was 
 chilled and benumbed. The icy hand came to Beryl Court and 
 to Onyx Square, and all the gold of Mammondom could not, for 
 that season, bring cheerful warmth again. 
 
 The News had come. A brief telegraphic message like a 
 thunderbolt first fell. Then followed the lightning flishes of 
 more messages ; then the driving tempest of full detads, — ana 
 the happiness of a household was scathed and blasted. ISo doubt, 
 no hope could glimmer in tlie black night of their woe. The 
 crushed, mangled, unrecognisable corpse had been gathered up 
 at Armentieres : the fragments of clothes, mingled with its 
 remnants, were such as a man of Hugh's degree would have worn. 
 There was the conclusive evidence of the furred coat, the writing-
 
 52 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 case, the pocket-book, and the passport. Hugh Jasper Goldthorpe 
 was surely dead. According to the law of France, the remains 
 should have been interred within four-and-twenty hours following 
 the decease ; but telegraphic messages stopped the interment. 
 The dust of so rich a man's son was not to be lightly disposed of. 
 The prefect of the department was written to ; the Englisk 
 ambassador in Paris condescended to wait upon tlie Minister of 
 the Interior and tell him of what golden parentage the young man 
 came ; and orders were issued to permit the transmission of his 
 body to England. 
 
 The Eeverend Ernest Goldthorpe remained in Onyx Square to 
 comfort his bereaved parents. Lieutenant William Goldthorpe 
 and his brother Edward, the Oxford Undergraduate, had to 
 undertake a sad pilgrimage to Calais. They were preceded two 
 days beforehand by Mr. Screwm, foreman to that eminent firm 
 Messrs. Eavenbury Brothers, of St. James's Street. All the 
 melancholy arrangements necessary were confided to this well- 
 known, and, indeed, historical house. They had buried the 
 Princess Charlotte ; and old Mr. Simon Eavenbury, who used 
 facetiously to say that the elm wasn't grown nor the lead dug from 
 the mine that would be needed for his shell and coffin, had 
 married the grand-daughter of the undertaker to whose care had 
 been intrusted the disposal of the decollated remains of the last 
 nobleman executed for high treason in England — Lord Lovat. 
 
 The ill-omened messengers did their work, and met the two 
 brothers at Calais. A party of French actors and actresses were 
 coming over in the mail-steamer, but, though the night was wild 
 and stormy, they huddled themselves on deck, and dared not enter 
 the cabin, knowing what lay in the hold beneath. A hearse, all 
 plumed and garnished, with a mourning coach and four, waited on 
 the Admiralty Quay at Dover. The family lawyer, Mr. Dross- 
 leigh, head of a confidential department in Beryl Court, and Mr. 
 Pluraer Eavenbury himself, junior in the historical firm of St. 
 James's Street, were also in attendance. jMr. Eavenbury's own 
 black brougham, with the showy long-tailed black horse — its dam 
 a Flanders mare that had assisted at the obsequies of William the 
 Fourth — followed the coach that contained the brothers, the 
 lawyer, and the confidential Mr. Drossleigh. A slight sojourn
 
 ON A FIELD, OH; A CROSS, SABLE. 5 -J 
 
 took place for refreshment at the " Lord AVarden ; " and it must 
 be mentioned, as a stroke of genius on the part of Mr. Haven- 
 bury, that the chambermaids who conducted the brothers to their 
 apartments had black bows in their caps, and that the waiters 
 who served breakfast were the most mournful looking of their 
 class, and had strips [of black crape on their arms. This last, 
 indeed, may not be so very surprising ; for from the waiter to the 
 mute there is but half a step, and vice versa. 
 
 Mr. Eavenbury, so far as was consistent with his professional 
 woe, thoroughly enjoyed himself. It was his and his firm's pride 
 and pleasure to furnish rich men's funerals in the first style of 
 Black Art. He was a little, bustling, bald-headed man, whose 
 voice scarcely ever rose above a whisper, and every one of whose 
 plaited shirt-fronts was worth three guineas. The black brougham 
 and black horse were merely his professionally private equipage ; 
 and when a very rich "party" was to be conveyed to town, he 
 took the sable vehicle and its grim steed down by rail. In Hyde 
 Park, away from business, Mr. Ravenbury, covered witli gold 
 chains, with a white hat and a black band, — it is said that he 
 continually wore mourning for a defunct eai'l, regarding whose 
 funeral he had given too lax reins to his imagination, and whose 
 executors had refused to pay the bill, — drove a dashing mail 
 phaeton, with two grays full of fire and action. He gave joyous 
 dinner parties and^balls at St. John's Wood, and at Gunnersbury. 
 His wife was a handsome lady, with a mezzo-soprano voice and a 
 mania^for Verdi. Her musical matinees were delicious ; and the 
 same einbroideress who arabesqued the hems of her underskirts 
 pinked the shrouds and rufiled the winding-sheets for Eavenbury 
 Brothers. Plumer Eavenbury betted ; but he had a keen eye for 
 safe joint-stock speculations. Sir Jasper Goldthorpe did not 
 disdain to bow to the undertaker when he met him at boards and 
 public dinners. " AVhy should not an eminent upholsterer, who 
 performs the last sad offices for the very highest nobility, go into 
 Parliament?" asked Eavenbury's friends after dinner at St. 
 John's AVood. His sparkling hock was superlative! "AVhy 
 indeed?" mused Mrs. Plumer Eavenbury, as her jewelled fingers 
 paused on the keyboard of her Broadwood's grand. " I wish he 
 would, and cut the bone-grubbing business," savagely cried
 
 54 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Tressel Eavenbury, gentleman cadet at Woolwich ; when his com- 
 rades taunted him on the paternal vocation, and nicknamed him 
 "Hatchment." " Stuif and nonsense! " -svheezed old Mr. Simon 
 Eavenbury ; " let him stick to the shop." Plumer's only son was 
 destined for the Artillery. His papa would -have preferred the 
 Church — with an eye to a cemetery chaplaincy, the ill-natured 
 surmised ; and he had always had a great penchant for classical 
 studies, being supposed to know all the Latin mottoes on his 
 hatchments by heart ; but Mrs. Plumer Eavenbury declared there 
 was quite enough black already in the family, and Tressel was senb 
 to Woolwich. 
 
 A dense crowd, whispering comments on the fabulous wealth of 
 the Goldthorpe family, followed the mournful train from the hotel 
 to the railway station. A special train had been secured, and. 
 Death and Sorrow sped through the icebound Kentish country to 
 London Bridge. The same lugubrious ceremonial took place at 
 the metropolitan terminus. Waggoners and cabmen stared in 
 crowded Cannon Street, and Fleet Street, and Oxford Street, as 
 the embryo funeral swept along. In the western part of Oxford 
 Street, and the Edgware Eoad, where some of Sir Jasper's tenants 
 dwelt, the shutters of the shops were closed. There was a great 
 silent throng in Onyx Square as the dead man was brought home 
 to his fother's house. 
 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe had seen no one but his wife, his body- 
 servant Argent, and the confidential Mr. Drossleigh, since the 
 news came. He alternated between his bedroom and his study, 
 and his children ; — nay, Magdalen Hill even, did not dare approach 
 him. Argent described him to his familiars, the lady's maid, the 
 housekeeper, and the butler, as being less overwhelmed by grief 
 than furious at his loss. The unhappy man's ravings and com- 
 plaints had been fearful. He, usually so silent, had poured forth, 
 hour after hour, torrents of passionate ejaculations. He disputed 
 the justice of the decree that had taken his son from him. He 
 menaced and defied the ravisher Death. His first-born could not, 
 should not die, he wildly repeated. It was a shame. It ought 
 not to happen. He was the richest man in the City of London. . 
 Then he relapsed into a silence that seemed to approach stupe- 
 faction. Let us draw a veil over this dismal spectacle. AVho
 
 ON A FIELD, or; A CROSS, SABLE. 55 
 
 meets Death or bears its visitations in the same manner ? Piety 
 and Faith oft await its coining, shrinking and terrified ; while 
 sceptic cynicism turns its face to the wall, smiling. Nothing is 
 there so unjust as to estimate man or woman's reality by the way 
 they die, or undergo the bereavements in which Death is for ever 
 dealing. Judge not fi*om the dried-up eye; from the common- 
 place remark at the very grave's brink ; from the solicitude for 
 petty things while yet It is in the house. Judge not from the 
 floods of tears, from the agonising wailings, from the days and 
 nights passed crouching on carpets, or on stairs ; from the hands 
 that are wrung, the eyes that stream, the hair that is disheveled. 
 Erom earliest time men have set up a conventional standard of 
 sorrow to be observed at the death of their fellows. But it so 
 rarely is the nature of humanity to act exactly up to the standard : 
 there is so much grief that cannot be seen, and so much that is 
 simulated and over-acted, that it is the rather a commendable con- 
 venience than a hypocritical formula to have professional bowlers 
 and mourners — hirelings who will tear their hair, and blacken 
 their faces, and rend their garments ; or their modern substitutes, 
 who will carry staves in their hands and trays of feathers on their 
 heads for a given sum. Let them do their oflBce for the sake of 
 the "World and its usages, and we shall have time to grieve, each 
 in our own fashion. 
 
 And as each of these children of Mammon so grieved, at their 
 great and appalling loss, I leave the father and the mother : their 
 woe is not for contemplation. If a man were as rich in children 
 as Numenius, he is not to be comforted for the loss of his firsb 
 child, any more than a woman can ever be comforted for the 
 destruction of her first love. But those to whom Hugh had been 
 brother felt the loss in more mingled kind. The Reverend Ernest 
 Goldthorpe was now the Heir. His profession forbade that he 
 shoidd ever become occupant of the throne of Mammon in Beryl 
 Court ; yet still he might expect to enter one day into the pos- 
 session of a title and almost boundless wealth. Would he rest 
 content with a country rectory ? Would bis golden thousands 
 prove stepping-stones to a bishopric ? The second son of Sir 
 Jasper Goldthorpe became at once a mark for eager eyes. He 
 was but twenty-five years of age. He was unmarried. The nine
 
 56 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 hundred a year he had from his living could matter but little to 
 
 him now. What a prospect lay before ! Did he love his dead 
 
 brother ? Did he regret his loss ? The Eeverend Ernest made 
 
 no sign. He was a pale bloodless man, and ordinarily reserved. 
 
 Solemn and severe, he took up his quarters in his father's house, 
 
 and obeyed the behests which, almost hourly, were transmitted 
 
 to hitn either in Sir Jasper's hand-writing, or by word of mouth of 
 
 the confidential Mr. Drossleigh. There was an immensity of work 
 
 to do. Drossleigh took care of the City business, and, had he 
 
 even not attedned to affairs in Beryl Court, there is no doubt 
 
 that Sir Jasper's money-bags would have turned themselves over 
 
 of their own accord, and multiplied themselves spontaneously. 
 
 There were perpetual interviews with Mr. Plumer Eavenbury and 
 
 his prime minister, Mr. Screwm. There were servants' and family 
 
 mourning to be ordered : for the superior womankind of Onyx 
 
 Square were quite beyond direction and advice. Mrs. Cashraan, 
 
 the housekeeper, had carte hlanche, or rather carte noire, for the 
 
 habiliments of woe. A select committee of Lady Goldthorpe's 
 
 female friends kindly assisted her ; and Cashman, installed in one 
 
 of the Groldthorpe carriages, was continually driving backwards and 
 
 forwards between Onyx Square and Mr. Jay's in E^gent Street. 
 
 That urbane and distinguished purveyor of ladies' mourning took 
 
 her at once to the Unmitigated AVoe Department. Whole bales 
 
 of the paraphernalia of inconsolable grief were despatched to 
 
 Onyx Square. Mr. Jay's young ladies plied their busy needles : 
 
 tried on bonnets, and mantles, and skirts. Ail the lower rooms 
 
 of Mammon's house were littered with funeral trappings, and the 
 
 maid-servants dreamt of crape and bombazine. 
 
 There were hundreds of letters to be written to the vast circle 
 of Goldthorpe's friends and clients, bidding them to the funeral, 
 or merely apprising them of the loss. There were the long and 
 pompous advertisements to be drawn up for the Times and 
 Horning Post. There was a sad letter to be sent to Malta, that 
 the young sailor on board the Magna7iimous should know that 
 Mammon had one son the less. 
 
 It was premature as yet to speak of the tomb or the inscription. 
 " I suppose Ernest Goldthorpe will write that himself. His Latin 
 was never very good," opined many a clerical and scholastic
 
 ON A FIELD, OR; A CROSS, SABLE, 0/ 
 
 admirer of the Goldthorplaa grandeur. " He fought bravely 
 enough at the Sutlej. They can't do less than give him a statue 
 down at Goldthorpe, or at least a couple of busts for town 
 and country," reasoned Tom Praxtiles the sculptor, fondly re- 
 garding his unsold Bacchante and his unsuccessful design for a 
 monument to Lord Hill, in his not too frequented studio in 
 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. 
 
 " And then there'll be the monument in the cemetery, Praxtiles, 
 my chick," would hint friendly George Gafferer, Praxtiles' boon 
 companion, Boswell, and critic, who had looked in to inform hiiu 
 that there was a neat little paragraph about his last bust (Pes- 
 sawee E-amjetjee Bobbajee Lai, the rich Parsee of Bombay) in 
 that morning's Comet, smoke a quiet pipe, drink a bottle of pale 
 ale, and give him another sitting for his own (complimentary) 
 bust. 
 
 " There'll be no stonecutters' work where a Goldthorpe's con- 
 cerned, my chick," Geoi-ge would continue. The wortliy soul 
 ■was thus naively affectionate with every body, and would have 
 called the judge who sentenced him to death " my chick." " No 
 broken columns, or quenched torches there, you may depend. 
 Why, they'll have a mausoleum, Praxtiles, with slabs of Carrara, 
 and verde antique and scagliola columns, with gilt capitals and a 
 bronze railing, and a weeping Victory at top. Write in at once, 
 my dearest chick." 
 
 Praxtiles didn't write, but he left his card with kind inquiries, 
 that afternoon, in Onyx Square ; and meeting the Lieutenant of 
 Hussars moodily walking through Bayswater, grasped his hand 
 with a depth of sympathy that would have drawn tears from one of 
 Praxtiles' own marble blocks. The sculptor had had the honour 
 of dining more than once at Sir Jasper's, and he never dined with 
 a rich man without at once laying the foundation of a plot for 
 hewing his bust while alive, or his statue when dead. 
 
 Lieutenant William was constrained to walk moodily about 
 Bayswater, for he could not sit all day in the darkened house, or 
 in the frigid Jermyn Street Hotel where he slept. He scarcely 
 knew his dead brother ; but he was very sorry — the sorrier because 
 his kind father and mother were in such dire grief. He was a 
 good-natured young man, who could not think much. The most
 
 58 THE SEVEN SONS OF MA3IM0N. 
 
 he could say about the dreadful catastrophe at Armentieres "was 
 that it was " a shockiug thing," and that " poor Hugh was gone, 
 you know." He did not know how to employ his time. He 
 wrote to his colonel and to one or two friends about the " shocking 
 thing," and the gallant officers of the jSiueteenth repeated at 
 mess that it loas shocking, and that " poor Hugh Goldthorpe had 
 gone to the bad." But they talked much more about his father's 
 money, and indulged in many surmises as to whether the parson 
 would come in for the bulk, or whether Willy Groldthorpe would 
 sell out and turn money-grubber in the City. 
 
 The subaltern would have liked to look in at his club in St. 
 James's Square, but he knew that etiquette inhibited his going 
 there. He dared scarcely enter the shop of his cigar-dealer in 
 ordinar3^ The Eeverend Ernest was too busy to talk with him. 
 Miss Hill did not leave her room. He had an odd disdain for his 
 three younger brothers, to whom he could not talk, and who could 
 not talk to him. It was inconvenient to walk about Bayswater 
 all day long ; but at last he hit upon a happy expedient and com- 
 promise, and retaining a private room at his hotel, did there 
 entertain a select circle of tall, stupid, good-natured fellows, 
 mostly with tawny moustaches, and belonging to the profession 
 of arras, who drank sodawater dashed with cognac, smoked very 
 large and powerful cigars, made occasional bets on current events, 
 and bade him " cheer up, old fellow." Lieutenant William got 
 on very well with these friends until the funeral. It was just the 
 kind of consolation he needed. He was not hard-hearted — only 
 somewhat obtuse, and nearly a stranger to the kinsman he had 
 lost. AVho shall say that he was not as sorry as he might 
 reasonably be expected to be ? 
 
 The undergraduate and the clerk in the Civil Service had been 
 mere boys when Hugh had paid his visit to England. They were 
 bewildered and shocked by the awful intelligence of his death, but 
 they could scarcely bewail it. They talked incessantly about it 
 to each other, canvassed every item of the tragedy as lads will 
 do ; but how were they to weep, and what were they to weep 
 about ? 
 
 As for Alfred Goldthorpe, he was a child. The best thing that 
 could be done for him was done ; and the Honourable Mrs. Cony-
 
 ON A FIELD, or; A CROSS, SABLE. 50 
 
 beare, \vho had a wliole tribe of boys home for the holidays, took 
 temporary charge of him. The little fellow did not understand 
 much about the bereavement his family had suffered. He had 
 never seen Hugh. He was chiefly sorry when the lady's maid 
 told him that Miss Magdalen, of whom he was dotingly fond, was 
 ill with grief. But the laughter of his playmates — their toys, and 
 games, and sponge-cakes, and oranges, soon controlled him ; nor 
 could Alfred resist an odd feeling of gratification at the thought 
 of the fine clothes for which the tailor had measured him, and 
 which he was to wear, or banish from his young mind the know- 
 ledge that the sad misfortune that had happened in his family 
 would invest him with a strange importance aud interest when 
 he went back to school. 
 
 Should these brothers of the dead have shown their sorrow 
 otherwise ? — and if so, in what manner ?
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 " EESUBGAM." 
 
 In the early days of January 1850, the solemn funeral of Hugh 
 Jasper Goldthorpe took place. The locality chosen ^vas the 
 cemetery at Kensal Green. The Goldthorpe family had been too 
 recently inscribed in the Libro cV Oro of provincial aristocracy 
 (Burke's Landed Gentry) to claim sepulture in some ivy-grown 
 country church, the pavement of whose chancel was sown thick 
 with monumental brasses and cross-legged figures, couchant, of 
 mediaeval Goldthorpes, dead and gone. Hugh could not be laid 
 with his ancestors ; and Sir Jasper had ever calmly repudiated 
 the convenient insinuation of heraldic parasites, that it might be 
 possible to find a Goldthorpe well known as a Saxon franklin 
 whose fathers had been here long before the Conqueror's coming, 
 and the registration of whose land and swine had been unaccount- 
 ably omitted from Domesday-book. The potentate of Beryl 
 Court prided himself on being the Kodolph of Hapsburg — read 
 " Lucksburg " — of his race. There had been some talk of a 
 mausoleum in the park at Goldthorpe ; but this idea was aban- 
 doned at the earnest instance of the mother of the deceased. 
 Where her son's ashes were laid, she was determined, she said, to 
 lie some day ; and it should be, she insisted, in a Christian grave- 
 yard, not among the deer in a park. There were those among 
 the Goldthorpe following who expressed themselves of opinion 
 that "Westminster Abbey was the most appropriate place for inter- 
 ment. Why had not Captain Hugh been killed at the Sutlej ? — 
 his representatives might have demanded a niche in the Abbey 
 for him then, as of right. Sir Jasper knew the Dean. AYhat were 
 Deans good for but to be civil and do what they were asked ? In 
 the end, Kensal Green was fixed upon, and the freehold of a huge 
 fiimily grave purchased there. Praxtiles the sculptor knew its super-
 
 cc 
 
 KESURGAM." Gl 
 
 ficial area to an incli two days before the funeral. So did Fiddyas 
 of Ecclestou Street, Pimlico ; so did E-oubiliac Tompkins of the 
 Euston Eoad. Now was the time. Tompkins fondly pictured to 
 himself the means of getting rid of that long-completed group, 
 "Pity -weeping over Valour," which, in despair at seeing marble 
 lie idle, he had begun to think of exhibiting at Canterbury Hall, 
 or selling to the proprietor of a tea-garden. 
 
 The day of the funeral was kept as a kind of mournful fete in 
 Onyx Square. The little Miss Sardonixes (Dr. Sardonix, physi- 
 cian to the Court), next door to the house of Mammon, were 
 excused that morning from attendance at the Hyde Park College 
 for Young Ladies. They stood at the dining-room windows instead, 
 and glued their young noses to the panes thereof, until the last of 
 the brave funeral had disappeared from the Square. Pappadaggi, 
 the music-master, was bidden to forego his bi-weekly lesson at 
 Number Twelve. The Miss Bosuns (Admiral Bosun) were eagerly 
 scanning tlie faneral from tlieir drawing-room casements. Mrs. 
 Twizzle from Maida Hill, Miss Ashtaroth, the old maid from the 
 Harrow Eoad, who regularly attended the marriages at St. 
 George's, Hanover Square, and (by special favour of a subsidised 
 pew-opener) was permitted to weep plenteously in the organ-loft, 
 with Captain Hawksley, E.jST., and one or two evening-party young 
 men, looked in before noon. There was a nice hot lunch at two. 
 The Bosuns didn't know the Goldthorpes. The dead man was 
 no kinsman of theirs. What harm was there in their having a 
 little singing, and spending a most delightful afternoon ? Old 
 Chewke, the plethorically wealthy retired timber-merchant, for- 
 merly of Riga, went purposely two hours later to the Union Club 
 that morning. He had declined an invitation to the funeral. He 
 was a selfish old man, who ate hot veal cutlets in bed, and was 
 afraid of the weather ; but he watched the start of the procession 
 narrowly, and to Chipp, his body servant, imparted his opinion 
 that it was deuced well done, and a credit to Goldthorpe. Chewke 
 knew Plumer Ravenbury quite well, and nodded familiarly to 
 that monarch of funeral-furnishing as he saw him hand the chief 
 mourner into his coach ; then, remembering the solecism in 
 etiquette he had committed, he retreated to his study, and took 
 Chipp severely to task for daring to peep at the cortege through
 
 63 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 the half-opened door. " Think of my health, sir," thundered the 
 retired timber-merchant. Mr. Chewke did not like draughts in 
 his house — always excepting hot ones (with spices and sugar) 
 before going to bed. 
 
 Truly, it was the grandest funeral that had e?er been seen in 
 Onyx Square. There was no cheap local papers in those days 
 {capital institutions are those cheap local papers), else some 
 Sayswater Chronicle or Faddington Gazette would have described 
 the order of the procession: the hearse and plumes, with the 
 cypher of the deceased embroidered on the horses' trappings ; the 
 long train of mourning coaches ; the longer file of private carriages 
 — from those of dukes and marquises downwards, all with shutters 
 ■closely drawn up, all with coachmen and footmen with long hat- 
 bands; — the policemen who cleared the way and closed the pro- 
 cession ; the crowds that lined the streets through which it passed. 
 The chief daily newspapers did indeed each devote a paragraph to 
 the description of the melancholy spectacle. 
 
 Throughout, it was the strangest mixture of the things of this 
 world and those that belong no more to the world at all. Tou 
 could not keep wealth and pride and feasting away from the 
 black, dreary drama of death. Those who were being arrayed for 
 jnourners could not help fingering their scarves and hatbands, and 
 wondering at the thickness and richness of the silk. There was 
 cake and wine everywhere ; and people could not help taking port 
 and sherr}' with one another. The maid servants could not help 
 looking prettier than usual in their new black and glossy-ribboned 
 caps. There was a buzzing of murmuring conversation most mun- 
 dane while the last dread preparations were going on above — and 
 tUl murmuring was hushed by the creaking of the stairs and the 
 coming down of the bearers. Dr. Sardonix was one of the family 
 physicians. His little daughters wagged their heads affection- 
 ately, and pointed their innocent fingers, until reproved by 
 Zenobia, their mamma, when they saw the 'Doctor emerge, 
 pilloried in the highest of white cravats, from Mammon's portals, 
 and bow gravely to the undertaker's aide-de-camp, who assisted 
 Lim into the mourning-coach. Dr. Sardonix knew the man by 
 eight; and, in good sooth, Beaver, the functionary in question, 
 had often officiated as toastmaster at the anniversary festivals of
 
 (( 
 
 KESUUGAM." G3 
 
 tlie hospital of whicli the Doctor was chief physiciau. In the 
 dining-room, pending departure, Dr. Sardonix was, as usual, 
 gravely eloquent. He was shorn of one customary subject of con- 
 versation, for be could not dilate on the curative treatment to 
 which he had subjected the deceased: — "but Nature was too strong 
 for us — too strong, my dear sir," would the Doctor wind up. 
 But he was a ready man, and atoned for the loss of his topic by 
 pleasiug anecdotes of railway accidents. Here Bolsover, M.P. — 
 who always went in for his borough as a red-hot Liberal at every 
 general election, spoke and voted as a determined Tory till the 
 last month of the session, then turned Liberal again, and was 
 triumpliautly re-elected after the dissolution — cut in with quota- 
 tions of celebrated epitaphs, and " Sidney's sister, Pembroke's 
 mother," "Martini Luigi implora pace,''^ and similar mortuary 
 inscriptions that have become historical, were handed about with 
 the cake and wine. 
 
 It was the same in the carriages during the dreary ride up the 
 Harrow Eoad. The lawyers talked of abstruse conveyances, and 
 notable wills, and picturesque Chancery suits, in which all the 
 costs were costs in the cause, and none of the suitors got any- 
 thing: — "Not a rap, sir," whispers Mr. Probate of Bedford Eow," 
 suiting the action to the word on his silver snuft-box, and treating 
 himself to a pinch of Macabaw. The legislators talked politics. 
 The clubmen talked club scandal and girded at the committee ; 
 the clergymen talked schools, missionary societies, Ecclesiastical 
 Commission, and the Times newspaper; — I don't know how it is, 
 but the clerical body seem better read in the contents of the 
 leading journal than the members of any other class in the com- 
 munity ; — and the merchants and money-dealers, of whom there 
 were very many in the funeral following, talked stocks and ship- 
 ping, bullion, bills, and bankruptcy, and Mammoniana generally. 
 The most direct reference to Sir Jasper Groldthorpe was made by 
 Mr. Deedes (Deedes, Eerret, and Wax, the great bank solicitors), 
 who opined that, after all. Sir Jasper would be better for his 
 calamity, for that " they could hardly keep him out of his peerage 
 
 now." 
 
 At every funeral there is a mourner — in mien, the gravest 
 among the whole company — who makes jokes. I suppose he
 
 04 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 cannot help being jocose. His notorious propensity does not 
 prevent his being bidden to funerals. The strangest thing about 
 him is that he is only facetious at funerals, and that at ordinary 
 dinner-parties he is the dullest dog present. There was such a 
 joker present at the solemnity now recorded. His name was 
 Grygger. He primed himself well with old Madeira before 
 starting. He was funny (behind the largest white pocket-hand- 
 kerchief) all the way from Onyx Square till the tombstone- 
 cutters' yards that herald the vicinity of the cemetery began to 
 loom in sight ; and he never forgot to precede each joke with a 
 chuckle, and end it with a sigh. He was universally popular, 
 although all his hearers were strongly of opinion that he ought to 
 be thrown out of the coach-window. 
 
 And so, with faces that belie their thoughts, these children of 
 mrotality follow the poor crushed mortal who has put on immor- 
 tality. There is a larger crowd at the cemetery gates. The 
 spectators are packed closely in the street of tombs, up which 
 the black train passes. The chapel is densely filled; the last 
 orisons are said ; the grave has been reached ; the handful of 
 earth thrown in ; the cords are dragged rattling up ; the com- 
 pany throng round the frost-covered planks that edge the grave, 
 and peep over each other's shoulders to read the inscription on 
 the gilded coffin-plate : 
 
 HUGH JASPER GOLDTHORPE, 
 
 Captain H.E.I.C.S. 
 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 
 Died, Twenty-seventh December, 
 
 1849, 
 
 aged Twenty-seven Years. 
 
 " Resurgam." 
 
 "What does the last word mean?" timidly asks of Doctor 
 Sardonix a little miUiner's girl in a skimping plaid shawl, who has 
 come to the funeral as to a show, and has edged herself in among 
 the mourners. 
 
 Dr. Sardonix looks condescendingly over his pillory of- starched 
 muslin at the inquisitive modiste.
 
 «-r,„„,.„^,,, }} 
 
 RESURGAM. 65 
 
 " ' Hesurgam^ my young friend," lie responds in a dulcet under- 
 tone, " is a Latin word, and signifies ^ I shall arise again.'' " 
 
 "Tliank you, sir," says the little milliner v.'itli a curtsey, and 
 runs off to tell Amy, her friend, who is staring at the tomb of the 
 late Mr. Diicrow, of the grand crimson velvet coffin she has seen, 
 with its gilt handles and cherubim heads, and goldeu plate, and 
 how kindly tlie nice old gentleman in the white neckcloth 
 answered her. 
 
 " i?est«-(7rt??j." One need not look into a grave to read that 
 motto. You may see it painted ou the hatchments in every 
 undertaker's shop-window. 
 
 It was all over. The sexton who locked the chapel-door just 
 paused as he noticed a fresh line of furrows on the great wooden 
 turntable bier, covered with thousands of dints, in the centre of 
 the edifice. " What a heavy coffin, to be* sure!" he said medita- 
 tively. " Might have lield three, llaveubury Brothers have made 
 a good thing of it this time." And so locked all up, and went to 
 smoke his pipe at the little beershop hard by. The undertaker's 
 men crammed the rich pall into the hearse, and hauled the plumes, 
 off their several pegs as though they were extinguishing so many 
 corpse-candles. Then they rattled off to town, their legs swinging 
 over the sides of the veliicle, and their jolly noses brightening up 
 with the bracing motion and the thoughts of the bowls of punch 
 they would partake of that night. For Raveubury Brothers gave 
 an anriual supper to those who did "black work" for them, and 
 this festival happened to be concurrent with the grand funeral at 
 Kensal Green Cemetery. 
 
 The carriages, of which the shutters had been so closely drawn 
 up, and whose attendants had assumed such mournful adjuncts to 
 their garb, did good service that evening ^n the conveyance of 
 their distinguished proprietors to balls, and suppers, and panto- 
 initnes. Everybody weut about his several business, and was 
 business-like or convivial, sleepy or snappish, preoccupied or 
 simply indifferent, as circumstances or inclination led him. Only 
 Grygger the joker had the blues, slipped oil" to his lonely chambers 
 in Duke Street, Adelphi, sipped mutton-broth fur his dinner, and 
 passed the evening in the perusal of ISir Thomas Browne's " Urn 
 Burial."
 
 G6 THE SEVEN SOXS OF MAilMOX. 
 
 Mr. Piumer Savenbury had not conducted the funeral on foot. 
 Members of the firm never did. It was Mr. Screvvm who, ebony 
 baton in l)and, marshalled the procession, and walked valorously 
 through the frozen mud to Kensal Green. He would not have 
 derogated from his position by accepting a "lift" on the road, for 
 worlds. Inferior undertakers might do it; but, as Mr. Screwm 
 observed to his immediate subordinate, Beaver (by night a check- 
 taker at the Olympic Theatre, Wych Street, Strand,— and much 
 success to you, Messrs. Eobson and Emden), " hif E,avenbury 
 Brothers' 'ed man can't afford shoe-leather, aud charge chilblains 
 to the 'ouse, the dickens is iu it. I'll have the next warm, my 
 dear." Tlie colloquy took place at the Mute's Head, Church 
 Passage, Jermyn Street, the favourite house of call for gentlemen 
 who did black work. Mr. Piumer Eavenbury followed the cortege 
 at a decorous distance in his black brougham ; but he was on the 
 ground and at the grave, and adjusted the chief mourner's cloak, 
 and placed his Prayer-book for him. He had a civil word to say, 
 too, for the Cemetery Chaplain, a pallid young man with a fishy 
 eye, one of a race of hapless curates who had desperately clutched 
 at the large salary attached to a charnel-house chaplaincy. Do 
 these chaplains ever go raving mad from incessantly repeating the 
 same solemn ritual, I wonder ? We who listen to the noble 
 Burial-service of the Church of England, aud dwell upon its 
 beautiful language, its austere eloquence, ait with charmed ears 
 and reverent awe to hear the priest ; but how^ is it with the 
 unhappy ecclesiastic who has to read the service perhaps fifty 
 times a day ? 
 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe went straight from the cemetery to the 
 South- Western Eailway Station. Argent, his body-servant, 
 waited for him with one of his own close carriages at the gate. 
 The Baronet had borne up wonderfully. jS'aturul emotion, and of 
 the bitterest, he had shown in the chapel, and at the grave of him 
 who had been his hope, his pride, and his joy ; *but he was soon 
 nearly himself again ; and save that there were deep-sunk cavities 
 beneath his eyes, and that his hands and knees trembled (perchance 
 with the cold), you would scarcely have thought that he had 
 suffered this dreadful blow. He bowed to the company on leaving 
 the grave, said a kind word to Mr. Eaveubi'.ry >h.o ^as thrilled
 
 « 
 
 RESURGAar." 67 
 
 to the soul with gratitude tliereby, pressed the hand of each 
 of his children present, and, leaning on his second son's arm, pro- 
 ceeded to his carriage. Plunier Uavenbury scarcely thought it in 
 accordance with strict etiquette that the chief mourner's departure 
 should take place in this abrupt manner ; but he consoled himself 
 with the thought that grief so intense and wealth so prodigious 
 must be humoured, and, when the carriage had driven away, con- 
 ducted Ernest Goldthorpe and his four brothers to the mourning 
 coach (for even little Alfred had been brought thither) with a 
 dignity worthy of a cliamhellan of Louis Quatorze. 
 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe found a companion within his carriage. 
 Magdalen Hill was there. The blinds were down. The irirl flung: 
 lierself into his arms. They sobbed in concert, till the vehicle 
 stopped at the entrance to the Terminus an hour afterwards; 
 scarcely a word had been exchanged ; and both were the better 
 ibr their undisturbed grief. 
 
 Everybody in office at the Railway Station knew whom they 
 •were, and turned their heads away as they alighted, that they 
 might not be seen to notice the swollen eyes of Sir Jasper and 
 his companion. Argent had secured a carriage. Officials con- 
 ducted them to it with silent respect, and policemen stood on the 
 platform near, quietly warning off inquisitive travellers with a 
 whisper that Sir Jasper Goldthorpe was there. 
 
 An hour's journey brought them to Goldthorpe Station, formerly 
 Pogthorpe Eoad, but which had been rechristened in honour of 
 the contiguity of Goldthorpe Manor, Sir Jasper's marvel of a 
 place hard by. The mansion was a good two miles' distance from 
 the station. Another carriage was in waiting ; the servants in 
 deep mourning. The lodge-keeper at Goldtliorpe who flung open 
 the gilded gates was in profound black. The little charity-children 
 who passed them on the road had crape on their arms. Tears 
 tfickled down the cheeks of the ancient butler and housekeeper, 
 who received them in the grand entrance-hall ; and Plutus, the big 
 mastiff, whined as he crept towards his master and licked his 
 hand. 
 
 There was a bright and cheerful fire burning in the dining- 
 room : and when Sir Jasper and Magdalen had removed their 
 travelling wrappers, the ancient butler, who had been nervously 
 
 F 2
 
 G8 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMIION. 
 
 twitching his fingers and scraping his feet, as though he had some 
 message to deliver about whose reception he was not quite certain^ 
 said, bowing deferentially : 
 
 " If you please, Sir Jasper, I was to give you this card, and the 
 lady has been waiting more than an hour to see you. 
 
 The card was slim and limp, and glazed and scented. There 
 "was a crest engraven on it, and a name ; and beneath, these words 
 in pencil : — 
 
 " J must i>ee iioti, lUdtatitfu, anD afoue. J ieaini tfiat 
 xiou, were couiuta fiere, ifiid nwtuina. ^o\i catiuot zeftHQ 
 inc. J ;5aw tne la6t ox Jtuan." 
 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe hastily glanced at Magdalen, murmured 
 " Some City business," crumpled the card in his hand, and hurried 
 to the door. He darted across the hall into his study, where, 
 sitting before a fire as bright and as cheerful as that which he had 
 left, was a lady in very deep but very rich black, with a very 
 elaborate black bonnet, and pretty little black kid-gloved hands» 
 The drapery beneath lier sombre dress was wonderfully em- 
 broidered, and she had just lifted it to toast one of her little feet, 
 daintily arrayed in a sinning little black lottine, at the fire. 
 
 " Alone ? " said the lady in black, inquiringly, when the Baronet 
 entered. 
 
 " We are alone." 
 
 " Be kind enough to lock that door. Doubly. There's no bolt ? 
 Well, never mind. Thank you." 
 
 The lady rose, and put out one little gloved hand to Sir Jasper 
 Goldthorpe, smiling, showing her dazzling white teeth, and shaking 
 her sunny ringlets — of which she had a profusion — as she did so. 
 The Baronet took her hand, shuddering, but let it fall again as 
 though he had come in contact with some noxious reptile. 
 
 "And so you have buried your son?" she continued, quite 
 jauntily. " Poor fellow ! He was with me only five minutes before 
 the train for Calais started." 
 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe groaned, and hid his face in his hands. 
 
 " Only five minutes," the lady in black repeated. 
 
 There was no response.
 
 '' liKSUHGAM." CO 
 
 " You see I "wear raourninf^ for liitn. It was due to his 
 memory. It is fit that I should go iuto the very deepest black 
 for Hugh. I killed him." 
 
 The Baronet turned his eyes, wild in amazement, towards the 
 speaker. 
 
 " Tes ! " the lady in black airily repeated. " I killed him. 
 I'm not a luggage-train, though ; I had nothing to do with that 
 horrid accident." 
 
 " Do you wish to drive me mad ? " moaned the father. 
 
 *' ]N^ot at all. Only to make you remember old times and old 
 promises. Look here, Sir Jasper G-oldthorpe," the lady went on, 
 and seating herself coquettishly on one arm of the chair in which 
 her companion crouched rather than sat, " you once threatened 
 to have me transported." 
 
 " Woman, there were circumstances — " 
 
 '■ There were Devils, and there is one," interrupted the lady in 
 black, with pretty testiness, and swinging one of the dainty hotlines 
 to and fro. " Tou threatened to transport me — poor little Me ! 
 And to think that I should have killed your son, the heir to your 
 riches and your baronetcy ! Sir Jasper Groldthorpe, I killed him 
 with these! " 
 
 As she spoke she produced a charming little lijoic of a pocket- 
 book in morocco and gold. She took out an oblong packet of 
 papers, the topmost one seemingly covered with faded writing, and 
 crossed at right angles by more manuscript. 
 
 " Begardez done,'' she said ; "how pleasant the old writing looks. 
 ^ Accepted payable at ' wherever is the place ? " 
 
 A minute afterwards she had unlocked the door, and stood in 
 the hall, calling for " somebody, please ! " 
 
 "Ah! there is Miss Hill," cried Mrs. Armytage cheerfully, as 
 Magdalen's blanched face showed at the dining-room door. " Quite 
 eploree she looks. Oh! here is a servant. If you please," she 
 continued, addressing the butler, "you had better bring some 
 water, or some brandy, or some smelling salts, or something. I 
 don't think Sir Jasper is very well."
 
 CHAPTEK VII. 
 
 MES. AEMTTAGE IS AS MUCK AT HOME AS EYEE. 
 
 Mes. Aemttage did not care to stay for the succour she had 
 requested to be afforded to Sir Jasper Goldthorpe. She had done 
 all that, in her opinion, was due to the claims of humanity. Could 
 she, a lady and a comparative stranger, assist with propriety in 
 the resuscitation of a gentleman — such a very rich one, too — who 
 had fallen down in a fit, caused, no doubt, by excessive grief and by 
 reaction of the nerves after the melancholy ordeal through which 
 he had just passed ? Sir Jasper was in his own house, and sur- 
 rounded by his own attached domestics. The presence of Mrs, 
 Armytage was clearly no longer needed ; so she slipped through 
 the throng of frightened \ servants, who were crying out that 
 their master was dying ; brushed past Magdalen Hill, who was 
 hastening towards the study, and who regarded her with a look 
 of haughty aversion mingled with amazement, and tripped down 
 the great marble steps on to the terrace. Mrs. Armytage and 
 Magdalen were old acquaintances. The house-dog Pkitus sprang^ 
 towards her with a growl ; but she waved him off with her tiny 
 kid-gloved hand. She was very fond of dogs, and called this one- 
 "poor fellow;" but as the animal stood regarding her with un- 
 certain eyes, and uttered a low querulous baying, she sighed to 
 herself, " Will nobody love me, — not even a dog ? " The golden 
 and purple peacocks, in their house by the frozen lake, craned 
 forth their necks as Mrs. Armytage approached in her way dowu 
 a lower terrace into the park that stretched for full a mile before 
 Goldthorpe Manor. It was quite pretty to see her picking her 
 way along the carriage-drive between the tall old trees. She saw 
 the woodman with his billhook pruning the dead branches. The 
 man made a clumsy bow to her fiiir face and rich clothes. Her 
 golden ringlets seemed to belong, somehow, to Mammon. She
 
 MRS. AllMYTAGE IS AS MUCH AT HOME AS EVEli. 71 
 
 smiled graciously, and put a shilling into the man's leathern- 
 covered paw — at least, it looked a paw, swathed in his huge 
 verderer's glove. ''A civil fellow," she thought. "What would he 
 do to me if I were a ragged, barefooted'girl caught stealing dead 
 wood in Sir Jasper's park ? There is a cage in the village, I sup- 
 pose. Would they send poor little Me to gaol, or put me into the 
 stocks ? " And she broke into a bitter little fit of laughter, which 
 rang very strangely through the frosty air of the evening. It was 
 twilight when she reached the lodge-gates. The ancient keeper 
 came out with a lantern to open the portals for her. The light 
 shone upon her sombre dress, upon her white skirts and tinsTelled 
 hair. It shone, too, upon the heavy gate-posts, upon the gilding 
 and tracery, and the armorial bearings of the rich man displayed 
 above the entrance to his demesne. " A pretty place," murmured 
 Mrs. Armytage, giving the lodge-keeper another shilling. " And 
 it might all belong to poor little Me ! " 
 
 " You've seen Sir Jasper, my lady, may be ? " Iluggins the 
 lodge-keeper inquired, in a respectfully sympathetic voice. 
 
 " I have just left the house," Mrs. Armytage replied. 
 
 " Do he bear up, my lady ? " added Huggius, in a tone of affec- 
 tionate solicitude. 
 
 " Wonderfully. He will soon get over it. A little this way 
 with the lantern. Thank you. Good night." And the gates 
 closed with a clang, and Mrs. Armytage was gone, 
 
 " A nice-spoken lady as ever was," remarked Mr. Huggius to 
 his wife, as he dropped the shilling through the orifice in a 
 missionary society's box. "She didn'i; come up, though, with 
 Sir Jasper and Miss Magdalen, sureZ^. Didst thou let the lady 
 in, Moggy ? " 
 
 " Not I," answered Mrs. Huggins, his wife, addressed as 
 " Moggy." " A'nt I been down to Pogthorpe till a quarter of an 
 hour ago ? " 
 
 " Then 'twas you, Tib." 
 
 "I never saw the lady," protested the young person hight 
 Tib, who was a red-headed girl of fifteen, the lodge-keeper's 
 grand-daughter. 
 
 "That's strange," grumbled old Huggins, settling himself down 
 in a rush-bottomed chair to enjoy his customary afternoon's cough,
 
 72 THE SKVEX SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 whicli as customarily followed the afternoon's pipe, from whicli he 
 had been disturbed by Mrs. Armytage's summons to open the gate. 
 "That's pertickler strange," he continued. "I thought I should 
 ba' recklected all that gold-coloured hair if I'd seen it afore. My 
 memory must be getting uncommon bad, sureZy." And here, the 
 customary cougb overtaking Mr. Huggins, he substituted a bark 
 for a wheeze, and so went off to a growl and a rattle, until his tea 
 was ready. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Armytage walked througli the black winter 
 gloaming. She met a rural policeman, and wished him good night 
 with«much sweetness. She was troubled with no fears of poachers 
 or rustic burglars ; although there were some very coarse, ruf- 
 fianly-looking fellows lounging about the door of the Goldthorpe 
 Arms, half way between Pogthorpe and the manor. She was a 
 courageous little woman, and went straight on. There was no 
 village at Goldthorpe Station, formerly Pogthorpe Eoad ; only a 
 few stucco villas run up by a speculative builder, who had gone 
 mad immediately after mortgaging the carcasses of his houses for 
 thrice their value, and who was now expiating his taste for archi- 
 tecture at Colney Hatch. Two or three forlorn little shops had 
 been started by traders who hoped to get some custom from the 
 occupants of the villas ; but as half of these edifices were not 
 finished, and the other half had hitherto found only insolvent and 
 fraudulent tenants, and one also, as it was, had already the repu- 
 tation of being haunted, from the fact of a retired pig-jobber of 
 evil disposition having cloven his wife's skull with a chopper in 
 the front parlour the preceding Christmas Eve, commercial activity 
 vras not very remarkable at Goldthorpe Station. In fact, but for 
 its vicinage to the manor of Mammon, the Company might have 
 shut it up altogether without much detriment to the traflBc. 
 There was an unhappy little beershop, " The Railway Arms ; " 
 but the topers of the neighbourhood preferred either the " Gold- 
 thorpe Ai'ms " or the "Jolly Beggars" at Pogthorpe village 
 proper, which was distant a mile from Sir Jasper's. The great 
 man had once thought of taking Pogthorpe Eoad in hand, and 
 had he deigned to smile upon it, it would doubtless by this time 
 be as prosperous as Wimbledon or Kingston ; but one of the 
 porters happened to oifend him one morning, by omitting to hand
 
 MRS. ARilYTAGE IS AS MUCH AT HOME AS EVKK. 73 
 
 bim his Times before he entered the train, and thenceforth deso- 
 Jation gathered over the yet uncompleted station of Pogthorpe 
 Eoad. 
 
 It looked gay and cheerful enough, however, to Mrs. Armytage, 
 as she terminated her dark walk, and was accosted at the entrance 
 to the station by the driver of the solitary fly with the knock- 
 kneed horse attached to Pogthorpe Eoad, who, as she wished to 
 proceed to town, wanted, of course, to drive her '• any where, any 
 xvhere out of the world." There was light, there was warmth at 
 the station — brilliant gas and a roaring fire in the waiting-room. 
 The clerk was a species of Eobinson Crusoe, in a sealskin-cap, 
 who resided in a small hutch surrounded by skirting boards, and 
 who, in the intervals of the arrival and departure of trains, amused 
 himself by cutting out models of Hansom cabs in cardboard. 
 There were two porters, moody and saturnine men, one of whom 
 perpetually studied the time-bill, the proclamations against smok- 
 ing, and the " awful examples " shown in placards announcing the 
 recent conviction of Keziah Bopps,of Portsea,for travelling without 
 a return ticket, and the fining of AYilhelmina Lightfoot, of Basing- 
 stoke, for leaving the train while in motion. As he studied, he 
 whistled a lugubrious melody that began like "Old Dan Tucker," 
 and ended like " The Dead March in Saul." The other porter used 
 habitually to sit on his truck on the platform, inspecting the interior 
 of his bell, as though to find out if it were possible to ring it with- 
 out agitating the clapper ; while the odd boy who ran errands, 
 attended to the newspaper department, and had to be carefully 
 watched lest he should get at the electric telegraph, continually 
 ascertained his own ponderosity by standing on the weighing- 
 machine, and, when he could do it without observation, pasted 
 luggage-labels on the knees of his corduroys. It was a very 
 dreary little station, but hundreds of times its solitude had been 
 enlivened and its dreariness converted into splendour and gaiety by 
 the guests who had come down to visit .Goldthorpe Manor. The 
 flyman had conveyed peers of the realm and foreign ambassadors, 
 when they had missed the Goldthorpe carriages. The gorgeous 
 vehicles last named — barouches, curricles, broughams, dog-carts, 
 cJiars a banc — had gathered by droves at the station door, and 
 towering, powdered, purple-and-yellow footmen had condescended
 
 71 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 to quaff the mildest of mild ales at the little beershop. The dull 
 platform had been swept by the robes of beautiful women ; it had 
 been trodden hy statesmen, diplomatists, and millionaires ; but 
 ■where is the use of telling you of the had-beens ? — it was silent 
 and deserted now, and there was no one who sought warmth at 
 the waiting-room fire save Mrs. Armytage. 
 
 She would have to wait a full hour, the odd boy told her, for 
 the eight p.m. up-train. The moody porter paused in his study 
 of the time-bill, hushed his whistling, and stared vacantly at the 
 visitor. The Robinson Crusoe of a clerk, who had just made a 
 slip with his penknife, and severed two of the spokes of a cab 
 wheel from the axle, opened the sliding panel of his hutch, and 
 angrily bade the odd boy, for a " young limb," hold his noise. 
 "When Robinson Crusoe was not modelling Hansom cabs, or per- 
 forming his ticket-dispensing duties, he cultivated hollyhocks on 
 the slope of the embankment. He used to envy his brother, who 
 was an agent for coals about a hundred yards beyond the station. 
 He envied the landlord of the beershop. He envied the guards, 
 engine-drivers, and stokers, who were at least continually going 
 up and down the line. Nature may have fitted him to be a poet, 
 an artist, an orator ; stern Pate condemned him to be a station- 
 master. He used to say, like Mariana, that his life was dreary, 
 and that he was a-weary, a-weary. Promotion came not, he said. 
 He did not wi^^ii that he was dead, mainly, I think, because he 
 was a full-blooded vounj]: fellow, onlv three-and-twentv years of 
 age, and keenly interested in the eventualities of the next New- 
 market meeting. 
 
 As there was an hour to wait, and no refreshment-room and no 
 book-stall at the station, Mrs. Armytage found time hang rather 
 heavy on her hands. She got over about five minutes of the sixty 
 by her fovourite employment of toasting her little hottines at the 
 fire. Then she read all the advertisements, chromo-lithographed 
 and otherwise, which hung fi'amed and glazed on the walls, and 
 wondered w^hat manner of artists they could be who devoted 
 themselves to the composition of cartoons representing gentle- 
 men's hats, boneless corsets, taps for beer-barrels, iron bedsteads, 
 and isometrical views of ginger-beer manufactoi-ies at Bermondsey. 
 
 Then, what with her two miles' walk, the cold without, the
 
 MRS. AUMYTAGE IS AS MUCK AT HOME AS EVEll. 75 
 
 warm fire -nithin, the deathlike stillness, relieved only by the 
 ticking of the waiting-room clock, Mrs. Armytage grew drowsy. 
 Her little head fell gently back, her hands sank down among her 
 drapery, slie released her hold of a tract wliich some pious well- 
 wisher had left ou the table, and she sank into a profound sleep. 
 
 The tract was solemn, and rather fierce in its solemnity. It 
 was entitled "Where are you going ?" and on its title-page was 
 a neat woodcut of a young woman bearing a basket of flowers, 
 rapidly descending a mountain-path, at whose base was couched a 
 grisly bear. Mrs. Armytage had glanced at the tract with con- 
 siderable interest just before she went to sleep. She was a well- 
 read little woman, and liked literature for its own sake. " Where 
 are you going?" she repeated, with a tinkling laugh, " Ah, if 
 one could but tell ! Salt on ou Von va ? Didn't Diderot ask the 
 question ? Does any one know whither they are going ? " and 
 so fell into a slumber. 
 
 I declare that she slept as peacefully and as prettily as a baby. 
 Her little lips were just parted, and a brighter glow than ordi- 
 nary from the fire would momentarily come and tip her teeth with 
 pellicles of crimson. As she lay back in the chair, her head 
 recHning, the deep shadows were ou her forehead and above her 
 cheeks. Her fair throat shone radiant above the lace of her 
 collar ; while, enshrined in the trappings of her bonnet, lay, all 
 tumbled and flung back, those waves of golden ringlets. Had the 
 moody porter, or he who pored into the bell, or the Eobinson- 
 Crusoe clerk, entered while she so slept, they would have been 
 asses had they not kissed her, whatever might have been the 
 penalty. There was no Aggravated Assaults Act in 1S50. She 
 looked so calm, so tranquil, so happy. No shadow of the clouds 
 that sometimes pass over the sea of sleep disturbed her closed lids, 
 with those long lashes traihng gently, like the fringe of some 
 gorgeous drapery that veils a cabinet of gems. She smiled once 
 or twice, meekly, gently^, coaxingly enough to melt a man w'hose 
 heart was triply plated; the beadwork of her mantle just glanced 
 in the light as it rose and fell with the beating of her heart ; and 
 a soft sigh stole from those half-opened lips, as if to reproach the 
 waiting-room clock for its remorseless ticking, and hush it while 
 the fair creature slept.
 
 70 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMilON. 
 
 And so slie slept for about twenty minutes ; when with a quick, 
 sharp, painful scream, she started up, erect, trembling, fluttering 
 like a bird become suddenly aware of the ruthless hawk above 
 him ; first flushed, then pale, almost breathless. 
 
 "Hands off"!" she cried; "you shan't touch me. I'll, go 
 quietly. It isn't — Miss Hill," she continued hurriedly, — "am I 
 dreaming?" 
 
 Mrs. Armytage had not been dreaming. Hauds had been laid 
 upon her, but with no stern grasp. Only Magdalen Hill, draped 
 from head to foot in her mourning raiment, and with the rime of 
 the night-frost upon her, was there, and had awakened her. 
 
 The two women — the girl and the widow — had been acquainted 
 for years; had been at the same balls and feasts; but they had 
 never been alone together until this moment. Mrs. Armvtage 
 was evidently flurried; but then you must recollect how suddenly 
 she had been aroused from a comfortable sleep. In less than a 
 minute she was herself again, — shook her ringlets and arranged 
 her dress. She stayed the laugh that was rising to her lips ; but, 
 as she eyed Magdalen keenly, she laughed internally, in what 
 sleeve of her soul I am not psychological milliner enough to deter- 
 mine. " The little weasel was very nearly being caught asleep," 
 thought Mrs. Armytage. 
 
 The girl stood looking at her with sad eyes. Eemorseful, 
 wistful, well-nigh imploring — not haughty, not full of aversion 
 now. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Armytage," she said, in a low pleading tone, " what 
 i-s this ? What have you told Sir Jasper ? He is dreadfully ill, 
 I thought he would die. He had but just recovered consciousness 
 when I started, hearing from the lodge-keeper that you had left, 
 in the endeavour to find you. What terrible business could it 
 have been to bring you to our house at such a time ?" 
 
 " My dear Miss Hill," asked the widow, " before I answer your 
 question, allow me to ask you another. Is Sir Jasper in 
 danger ? " 
 
 " I scarcely know," replied Magdalen, in a broken voice. 
 " There was not time. I hurried after you. I rushed into a 
 carriage. Fortunately the house-steward bled him, and Dr. 
 Medley has been sent for."
 
 MRS. AKMYTAGE IS AS MUCH AT HOME AS EVER. 77 
 
 "I am very sorry, then," interposed Mrs. Armylage ; "but I 
 don't see that I have anything more to do with the matter. Had 
 the news I conveyed to ISir Jasper Goldchorpe brought about 
 fatal or even dangerous consequences, no one would have 
 regretted it more than I. As it is, he has just had a fit of 
 syncope, and will get on nicely. As I am neither a village 
 apothecary nor a member of the Eoyal College of Surgeons, I 
 can't be of any use ; and as I am going to London by the 8 p.m. 
 train, jou will permit me to remain your most humble servant to 
 command." 
 
 So saying, and witli a sarcastic laugh which seemed irrepressible, 
 she dropped a very low curtsey, and would have passed out. But 
 Magdalen Hill was determined. She put back Mrs. Armytage 
 with a calm sternness before which the Lady on the First Floor, 
 courageous as she was, could not avoid quailing, and in a tone of 
 resolution, placing herself before the door, she said : — 
 
 " Pardon me, madam, you cannot, you shall not, leave me thus. 
 We have but to consult each our own instinct to know that we 
 are no great friends. It is not through affection for you that I 
 am here. I come through love for ray dear dead Hugh ; I come 
 through love for my dearest friends and guardians. What has 
 brought you to sow additioual sorrow among us, wretched as we 
 are? It is something that concerns poor Hugh's memory, it is 
 something that concerns Sir Jasper; and I ask because I feel that 
 I have a riirht to know." 
 
 " I will not answer one word," quoth Mrs. Armytage, clenching 
 her little hands. 
 
 "I entreat, I implore you, then," Magdalen went on, her 
 sternness failing her, and her voice choked with sobs. " Oh, Mrs. 
 Armytage, you canmot be so cruel ! Is there any peril that can 
 be averted Irom Sir Jasper? is there auy thing you know of 
 Hugh's last moments that can inflict pain on his relatives, on me, 
 on any one ? Oh, speaiv, 1 adjure you ! " 
 
 Mrs. Armytage took from her pocket a little jewelled hojt- 
 honniere, took out a chocolate praline, and began daintily 
 nibbline: it. 
 
 " The train-bell must ring presently," she remarked, " and you 
 will be compelled to let me go. As it is, you have laid yourself
 
 78 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 open to an action for assault and false imprisonment. Imagine, 
 ' Armytage v. Hill. Extraordinary case, cross-examination of 
 ■witnesses.' Ha! ba!" 
 
 "If I interposed somewhat abruptly — " Magdalen broke in, 
 apologetically. 
 
 " There, there," continued the widow, " no harm is done ; you 
 want to be told something that I won't tell you. You thought to 
 frighten me with your Tragedy-queen airs, and now you are fit to 
 cry your eyes out. You are an overgrown school-girl, and I am a 
 woman of the world— a clever woman, you understand. Go, and 
 paint your missals, and leave serious things to men and women of 
 business. "What I know, I know ; and it is a matter between Sir 
 Jasper Goldthorpe and myself. Be a good girl, and get from 
 before that door. Will you have a praline? " 
 
 She held out the box of sweetmeats to her rival with a merry, 
 roguish twinkle in her eyes. She was quite at home again. The 
 weasel was thoroughly awake. Poor INTagdalen felt very much 
 like [a bird in the clutches of a fine silky-furred cat. She was 
 powerless, and dropped her head, and almost involuntarily moved 
 away from the door. 
 
 " That is better," laughed Mrs. Armytage. " There's nothing 
 like common sense. Common sense has been worth six thousand 
 a. year to me, a poor little Indian widow, with a twopenny-half- 
 penny pension. It was sensible in you to stand away from the 
 door as I bid you ; because, if you had not, and for all that you 
 are the grand young lady Miss Magdalen Hill, I would have torn 
 your bonnet off your head and your dress off your back." 
 
 What could Magdalen do ? How could she cope with this 
 affable tigress ? She averted her gaze, and drew herself closely 
 together, as the widow, in all the pride of her rustling skirts, swept 
 
 onwards. 
 
 " A word ere we go," she said, in a hot whisper that almost 
 blistered Magdalen's cheek. " Just now you said, and truly, that 
 we needed but to consult our instincts to know that we were not 
 friends. We are not. We are enemies. I am glad that Hugh 
 was killed; and had he come home and made you his wife, you 
 cat, I would have poisoned or shot you before ever you sat at his 
 table or lay in his bed. Good-by, and bless you!"
 
 I 
 
 MKS. ARMYTAGB IS AS MUCH AT HOME AS EViill. 79 
 
 These were the last words of Mrs. Armytage, on that occasion 
 at least, heard at Goldthorpe Station, erst Pogthorpe Hoad ; and 
 with this farewell and benediction she went out into the night, 
 and on to the platform. The moody porters, the clerk who made 
 the models, the boy wlio weighed himself, all woke np to tempo- 
 rary life and activity as the bell rang out, and the train rattled 
 and screeched into the station. The little platform shook ; the 
 people on it drew back, lest they should be sucked into destruc- 
 tion by the nionster's breath, and smashed to paste among its 
 whirling wheels. It came out of a deep cutting, and disappeared 
 in a dark tunnel. Green aud red lights fitfully shone as it dashed 
 awa}'. The red smoke made lurid the face of the engine-driver, as 
 lie stood with arms folded, thoughtful, at his post. From tlie 
 carriage windows dozens of visages of men and women peered out 
 on to the station ; many of them seeing it for the first time, and 
 being seen by those who peopled it for the last time in their lives. 
 So away sped the up-express, carrying its load of loves and hati'eds, 
 and hopes and fears, and joys and sorrows ; bearing mothers, 
 perchance, as bereaved as she of the House of Mammon was ; 
 sons as fair aud brave as he who had been slain at Armentieres ; 
 girls as young and haughty and as loving as Magdalen ; foreigners 
 and British men, lisping children and doddering dotards, bonest 
 people and foul rogues, Cornelia going to her children and Lais 
 going to a masked ball, millionaires whose ships have come home, 
 and bankrupts flying from a fiat — hundreds of patches towards 
 the make-up of that vast motley counterpane we call society ; but 
 not, in all its medley company, one woman, I will wager, prettier 
 or wickeder than the lady in black, who tripped with such grace 
 into a first-class coupe, and displayed such dainty white drapery to 
 the admiring eyes of the guard. 
 
 The train was gone. It had its goal; but whither went its 
 Occupants? "Where are you going?" asked the station-room 
 tract. Whither are we all going, and where is tbe terminus 
 where the last tickets shall be asked for in a Trumpet tone ? 
 
 The romancer's privilege can assign a destination to two per- 
 sons who so parted on this January night. Foiled and repulsed, 
 Magdalen Hill wept no more. The hot fire of the w,aiting-roora, 
 the hotter farewell whisper of the widow, had dried her tears for
 
 80 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 good. " She will tell me nothing," she murmured, " nothing, 
 although I know that she is working fearful evil to me and mine. 
 Heaven grant me strength and patience to watch and pray." 
 The carriage was waiting for her, and, sad and sorrowful, but calm 
 and resigned now, she was boi'ne back to Groldthorpe Manor, 
 where physicians and nurses were bending over an old man very 
 different to the blandly strong man who lorded it in Beryl Court, 
 and who lay now feebly moaning and half unconscious in his great 
 bed of state. A messenger on horseback passed Magdalen, or 
 ever she had cleared the environs of the station. He had been 
 bidden to telegraph to Dr. Sardonix, in London, desiring his 
 immediate attendance. The Doctor was called away from the 
 dinner-table of a rich East Indian Director, who, having quarrelled 
 with most of his friends, and turned his children out of doors, had 
 adopted a liver complaint as his son, and, indeed, his heir, — for he 
 had made his will in favour of a Special Hospital, — and now got 
 on very well with curry, mulligatawny, and Doctor Sardonix in 
 the evening, and tarraxicum, blue-pill, and Dr. Sardonix in the 
 morniug. The Doctor used to remonstrate with the Director ; 
 but how could you coerce a man who had sat under the pagoda- 
 tree until a golden apple had dropped on his nose, and imbued 
 him with directorial gravity ; who had tossed up heads or tails 
 with Sir Mungo Chutnee, in Leadenhall Street, as to whetlier the 
 Kajah of Cadmore should be maintained in his sovereignty or 
 deposed, whether the Begum of Boocherabad (vehemently sus- 
 pected of having boiled her pet dwarf in Macassar oil, specially 
 imported from Europe for the purpose, and buried a nautch girl 
 xmder a marble pavement, alive) should be prosecuted or pen- 
 sioned ; and who gave away commissions in the Bengal cavalry as 
 though they were soup-tickets ? The claret-bell had just rung 
 when one of Sardonix's black-worsted footmen brought him the 
 telegraphic message from his house. He rose in haste, had 
 scarcely time to take his usual after-dinner dose of carbonate of 
 soda in. the hall, and was very nearly committing a robbery in a 
 dwelling-house, by cramming one of the Director's damask napkins 
 into his pocket. "I thought so," he said, in a soothing tone, 
 apologising to his host. " Poor dear Sir Jasper ! Nerves, my 
 dear sir, nerves. We must be very cautious. We cannot take
 
 MRS. AR51YTAGE IS AS MUCH AT HOME AS EVER. 81 
 
 too much care of ourselves. Such a precious life must be guarded 
 by the miuutest precautions." It was Dr. Sardouix's practice, 
 whenever he found it feasible, to pay double-barrelled com- 
 pliments, or to hit two birds v>'ith one flattering bullet. The 
 Director felt grateful for the allusion to his " precious life," and 
 growled out an expression of admiration as the Doctor took his 
 departure. " Sensible man that," he said, half inclined to put 
 the Doctor in his will by the side of the Hospital for Dyspepsia, 
 but for econo.my's sake resolving to get the Doctor appointed 
 physician extraordinary to the special establishment in question. 
 " Eobus," he continued to the butler, "now he's gone I won't 
 have claret, I'll have port. The 'tawny' twenty-four, you know: 
 Herringpond's port, — the banker fellow who was hauged. Capital 
 port he had." 
 
 Dr. Sardonix paid a whole academy of compliments before he 
 i-eached Goldthorpe Manor. He asked the butler after his gout, 
 and called that delighted servitor " ray good friend." I believe 
 that if the footman had consulted him as to the malady which 
 prevented the calves of his legs from fattening, he would have 
 given him the most friendly advice. He complimented the cab- 
 man on the swiftness of his pace, and even presented him with an 
 •extra sixpence. " "We doctors are hard masters to horseflesh," he 
 sympathetically remarked. The black- worsted footman who accom- 
 panied his master to the station had not failed to tell the driver 
 how distinguished a practitioner he was carrying ; and the cha- 
 rioteer, could he have mustered up coui'age, would have begged 
 a prescription for the bronchial aftection under which Ins horse 
 was suffering. The South- Western Railway officials were deeply 
 impressed with a sense of Doctor Sardonix's talents and affability 
 before the special train that he had ordered — no expense was 
 spared when Mammon was sick — could be got ready. The keeper 
 of the book-stall bowed to him, handed him the third edition of 
 the Express, damp with the latest news, and respectfully informed 
 him that the sale of his work, " The curative Properties of stuffed 
 Sweetbread in its Action on the human Pancreas," by E. ]\Ioll- 
 yent Sardonix, M.D., P.R.S., was going on wonderfully. The 
 guard would have allowed him to smoke like Etna had the Doctor 
 lelt so disposed, and numerous hats were lifted as his "special" 
 
 G
 
 83 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAHMON. 
 
 quitted the terminus. Such homage is due to the princes of 
 science. There are some modest and retiring princes who never 
 get it, and don't want it ; but Dr, Sardonix had long since deter- 
 mined that the barque in which he navigated the sea of life 
 should be a golden galley and a pleasure-barge. He greased the 
 ways assiduously at launching, and, with a fair start, the craft 
 went on swimmingly. He had no need to puff himself in print ; 
 his natural suavity was far more effective than leaded type. " One 
 compliment is worth a hundred advertisements" was a favourite 
 apophthegm with this astute physician. He has long since got 
 his baronetage ; and I have no doubt that the next generation 
 will hear Sardonician orations delivered at the Royal College of 
 Physicians by practitioners as polite as he was. 
 
 The special train that took the Doctor down to Goldthorpe 
 passed the ordinary up express, and the illustrious medical man 
 was near enough at one moment to a certain first-class coupe to 
 have shaken hands with its occupant had he chosen to run the 
 risk of fracturing his arm in so doing. Mrs. Armytage no more 
 dreamed of the Doctor's proximity, nor the Doctor of Mrs. Army- 
 tage's, than you or I when we pass in the street our dearest 
 unknown friend or our bitterest ujiknown enemy — the woman 
 who would marry us to-morrow were we to ask her, or the man 
 who would force a dose of strychnine down our throats for two- 
 pence. There are human parallel lines which are continued to 
 infinity, and never meet. Mrs. Armytage arrived at "Waterloo, 
 quite unconi^cious as to whom her transient neighbour had been,^ 
 and comforting herself with a Bath bun — of which she ate little 
 more than tlie sugare'd top and the carraway-seeds — and a bottle 
 of lemonade, entered a cab — I am ashamed to say that it was a 
 Hansom — but she was of so frolicsome a disposition ! — and was 
 driven to the Victoria Hotel, Euston Square. Properly, her 
 palfry with embroidered housings, or her armoried litter drawn 
 by dos arrogantes mulas, like Gil Bias' uncle, the canon's : with 
 her squire and seneschal and page, should have been waiting for 
 her ; but I am writing in a prosaic time, and the characters in 
 my drama must have recourse for their more or less momentous 
 movements to such prosaic modes of conveyance as railways and 
 steamboats, cabs and broughams.
 
 SIRS. AEMYTAGE IS AS MUCH AT HOME AS EVER. 83 
 
 She had brought her bower-maiden, Mademoiselle Eeine, witli 
 her to London. That young lady detested England and the 
 Englisli ; aud when not required at her mistress's toilet, sat 
 immured in her bedroom, sipping sugar-and- water, and perusing 
 the charming novels of M. Xavier de Montepin. She was an 
 oral cahiiiet de lecture. The Blenheim spaniel was on duty also, 
 and yowled fractiously at the inferior quality of the London 
 chickens, and the shameful adulteration of the London cream. 
 Moustachu, the chasseur, was likewise in attendance, officiating, 
 when Mrs. Armytage travelled, as courier; on which occasions he 
 appeared elaborately got up in a braided pandour jacket lined with 
 silver-fox skin, a gold laced cap, and a tawny leathern pouch slung 
 round him, containing an assortment of every European coinage. 
 Moustachu had been fearfully seasick in crossing tlie Channel. 
 He consoled himself with potent draughts of the brown beer of 
 Albion when he landed ; and his mistress very nearly caught him 
 smoking a silver-mounted meerschaum at the corner of Seymour 
 Street as her cab drove by. 
 
 JN"or, finally, was "my man Sims" wanting to complete the 
 train of the Princess who lived in that sumptuous first-iloor in 
 Paris yonder. It was, however, Mr. Sims's invariable practice to 
 keep himself in the background. I question if he had even a 
 passport of his own ; or passed among Mrs. Armytage's " suite." 
 While the accommodation afforded to Mademoiselle Eeine and 
 the Sieur Moustachu heavily contributed to the expansion of the 
 widow's hotel-bill, the modest Sims took up his quarters at a 
 neighbouring coffee-shop, where he dined off saltpetred bacon and 
 boiled tea-leaves, read papers five days old, played di'aughts with a 
 contemplative signalman from the station over the way, and was 
 regarded by the landlord as a quiet party from the manufacturing 
 districts, who was seeking for a situation as a clerk in a London 
 house. If I had committed a murder and wished to avoid detec- 
 tion, I would hide in a coffee-shop close to a railway station. Pay 
 as you go, and nobody will take any notice of you, save perhaps 
 to remark to you how strange it is that the detectives haven't cap- 
 tured that sanguinary villain Slaughterford yet. 
 
 JMrs. Armytage was very well known aud highly respected at 
 the hotel. Faithful to her taste for a first-floor, she always had a
 
 84 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 suite of apartments one story high, and retained a brougham 
 while staying in town. Her little malachite card-basket was on 
 the drawinof-table, and when she returned it was full of scented 
 and heraldically emblazoned cards. The announcement, " At the 
 Victoria Hotel, Euston Square:— Mrs. Armytage and suite," met 
 her eyes among the "fashionable arrivals " in the Post. Sims had I 
 
 seen to that. Sims was in attendance, having been fetched by j| 
 
 Moustachu from the coffee-shop. " Quoi de nouveau ? " the lady 
 carelessly asked of Mr. Sims in French, for a waiter was present 
 solemnly lighting a galaxy of was candles. Darkness was the 
 only thing that made Mrs. Armytage nervous. 
 
 "IZ fait gros temps dans la chionrme" enigmatically replied 
 Mr. Sims. " Madame attendra que ce lutor soit parti." 
 
 The solemn lamp-lighter spoken of so uncomplimentarily as a 
 "lutor" a blockhead, having taken his departure, Mr. Sims, as 
 was his wont when conferring alone with his patroness, lightly 
 turned the key in the door. 
 
 " What is it ? " Mrs. Armytage asked, speaking very rapidly, 
 and a feverish flush rising to her cheeks. 
 
 "Bad as bad can be. The reddest of red lamps. Total, 
 dangerous. Prospect, smash." 
 
 "Don't torture me. Go on." 
 
 " Saddiugton and Dedwards." 
 " AVell ! " 
 
 " Won't renew.— AVhittle and Gumticlder." 
 
 " AVell ! " 
 
 " Have had the two five hundreds returned from ISTew Orleans. 
 Furious, but don't suspect any thing." 
 
 "Anything else?" Mrs. Armytage's foot was drumming on 
 the carpet, and her fingers were twitching at her dress. 
 
 " Something to tickle your fancy, as the valentines say. Ephraim 
 Tigg of Stockwell." 
 
 " What of him ? " 
 
 "Ephiaim Tigg of Stockwell," slowly and quietly continued 
 Mr. Sims:— he had been reading the names just quoted from a 
 scrap of paper, taken from a greasy pocket-book, and now carefully 
 closed it, strapped it up, and replaced it in his pocket — "Ephraiin 
 Tjgg of Stockwell is a Easper."
 
 MRS. AUMYTAGK IS AS MUCH AT HOME AS EVER. 85 
 
 " Go on, go on ; I shall lose my wits." 
 
 " Epbraim Tigg knows all about it, and ivon'i wait. He found 
 the counterfoil ; you must have been silly to leave tJiat.'' 
 
 A piercing scream was rising to the pretty woman's lips ; but 
 she checked herself, biting her lips till the blood came. Then she 
 started up, shaking her yellow hair about her like a Fury, and 
 wrinsiner her hands, 
 
 " I ain ruined, I am ruined ! " she panted out. " Why did I 
 ever go near that horrible old man ? I have never lost sight of 
 his white face and red eyelids. He has haunted me for days. The 
 others are nothing. Fool that I was not to get the money from 
 Goldthorpe before I struck him down : to-morrow may be too 
 late, O Sims, Sims, help me ; what am I to do ? " 
 
 I know that what I am going to relate is exceedingly improbable ; 
 but it is true, nevertheless, that the brilliant widow of the Hue 
 Grande-des-Petites-Maisons, with starting eyes, with swollen 
 veins, with dishevelled hair, threw herself on her knees before 
 the modest Mr, Sims, who lived at a coffee-shop, who had a face 
 like a ferret, and whose nose was not only peaked but purple at 
 the ends.* 
 
 " Mercv, mercy ! " she repeated, in scarce articulate accents. 
 It was -well that the door was fa>teued. The solemn torch-bearing 
 waiter would have been scandalised ; but an artist would have 
 rejoiced in the disordered folds of her drapery, spread over the 
 carpet ; in her attitude of despairing supplication. She was not 
 acting. Her laughing mask was thrown aside ; real grief and 
 terror raged beneath. She might, for her wild and scared looks, 
 have been a Helen, remembering that the woes of Troy were due 
 alone to her, that she was growing old, and that Paris had frowned 
 upon her. She might have been a Brinvilliers, with all her wiles 
 
 * "It is scarcely possible to quit this horrid subject without obsei-ving that 
 the facts which have now been demonstrated were in the highest degree impro- 
 bable. Who could have believed that two wretches of the ages of filteen and 
 
 sixteen years could have continued Let us not, then, too hastily 
 
 conclude on other occasions that what does not appear probable is necessarily 
 false, nor rashly reject every proposition for which we cannot fully account. Let 
 our inquiry be 'cool, critical, and deliberate ; but as evils multiply beyond pro- 
 bability, let our vigilance be not only constant but scrupulous, not resting on 
 slight appearances, but passing on to facts."— Edmd.nd Burke on a celebrated 
 Criminal Case, a.d, 17t>7.
 
 8G THE SEVEN' SONS OF MAIilMON'. 
 
 detected, and tlie lieutenant criminel, with his exempts, thundering 
 at the door. 
 
 " Get up," Tvas the unceremonious response made "hj Mr, Sims 
 to the impassioned appeal made to him. "Por laughing like a 
 Cheshire cat, and going on your knees like Ada the Outcast, I never 
 did see your equal. "What's the good of play-acting to me ? " 
 
 "I'm not acting," groaned Mrs. Armytage. I have said as 
 mucli for her alread}'. 
 
 " AVell, get up, at all events," Mr. Sims continued. " For such 
 a plucky one as you generally are, you do break down shamefully 
 sudden sometimes. You'll show the white feather at the C. C. C. 
 some of these days, if you don't take care. Think of your dignity. 
 There's notliiuor like dignitv ; and the shorter vou are, the more 
 dignified you ought to be. I'm too old for it, and always liked a 
 quiet life ; but you're just young enough to dignify yourself into 
 a coronet." 
 
 Mrs. Armytage no longer knelt ; she sat rather in the midst of 
 the carpet, looking up with a strange expression of mingled fear 
 and curiosity in Mr. Sims's face. 
 
 " Is there any hope ? " she asked. 
 
 " To be sure there is," replied Sims. " Every thing's as right 
 as can be." 
 
 She arose radiant, but trembling. She summoned up her laugh, 
 but it died away in a fitful gasp, and she had to place her hand on 
 her labouring heart. 
 
 " Why did you frighten me ? " she said, in broken tones. " I 
 have been in tortures, in agonv." 
 
 " To let you know what an excellent friend you can always 
 reckon upon in an emergency, and may reckon on if you only 
 follow his advice. Ephraim Tigg and I have done business for 
 Tears in all sorts of thincrs, from lotterv-tickets to the lead off 
 roofs. He daren't squeak ; but he icould have squeaked but for 
 me. You went to him without my sanction, and you see the 
 scrape you have nearly got yourself into. The money was a mere 
 fleabite, a miserable fifty. But your confounded imprudence has 
 nearly knocked down your palace, just as if it had been made of 
 cards. At your time of life, too, and after all the experience you 
 have had, you really ought to know better, ma'am."
 
 MRS. AUMYTAGE IS AS MUCH AT HOME AS EVER. 87 
 
 There was nothing openly disrespectful in Mr. Sims's tone, 
 ■even when he had used his rudest words of expostulation. He 
 spoke calmly and quietly, as though he were despatching a matter 
 of business, such as conferring about a schedule with an insolvent, 
 and a schedule concerning which it was necessary to speak without 
 disguise. And so soon as Mrs. Armytage had readied a sofa, and 
 had sunk down upon its luxurious cushions, the normal state of 
 things between mistress and man seemed of itself to return : 
 Mr. Sims addressing her with his customary deference, and she 
 treatinjr him with her usual familiar disdain. The little Blenheim 
 spaniel on the hearthrug, who had perhaps been dreaming of pullet 
 prepared in the superior Parisian fashion, woke up when his mis- 
 tress, on her knees, was adjuring Sims. He yelped peevishly; but 
 tno notice being taken of his complaints, turned himself round, 
 like a sensible dog, and went to sleep again. This was by no 
 means the first scene in which Mrs. Armytage had figured as an 
 actress, and at which Mouche the Blenheim had assisted. Matters 
 assuming a more cheerful aspect, he leapt up to his mistress's lap, 
 and took her caresses with much complacency. 
 
 "And how," demanded Mrs. Armytage gaily, and toying with 
 the dog, — " how did you manage it all, my good faithful Sims ? 
 Stay, you are sure there is no one at the door." 
 
 " Unless walls have ears," was the answer, " we are unheard. 
 There are some fools who, when they lock a door, put the key in 
 their pocket. Always leave it inside. JSTobody can look through 
 the keyhole then." 
 
 "You are wondrous wise, Sims, but tiresome. Proceed, my 
 •excellent agent.'' 
 
 " I sha'n't take you long. Saddington and Dedwards must have 
 the diamonds; you can't wear them. It's a bad moment for 
 selling, though. We've glutted too many markets already, and 
 another sale might bring on a stoppage of the firm of Armytage 
 and Co. Besides, you have jewels enough already to cover the 
 Queen of Sheba." 
 
 " Let the diamonds go ! I don't like to part with them : those 
 nice glittering things are so compact, tell such few tales, and sew 
 up so neatly in one's dress. Por a rainy day, at the North Pole 
 or at the Tropics, there's no umbrella so good as a diamond."
 
 88 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 "It's a pity you can't keep these; bat the figure is heavy. 
 "Whittle and Gumtickler could have done nothing but sue. Had 
 Somebody been alive at New Orleans, it might have been a 
 different matter. Eortunately, a champagne supper and the 
 yellow fever— only ^thirty-six hours— kept your secret for you." 
 
 Mrs. Armytage just raised her eyes, and her hand rested for a 
 moment immobile on the silken head of the dog. 
 
 "Dead?" she rather looked than spoke as she made the 
 inquiry. 
 
 "Dead as mutton," echoed Mr. Sims; "our dear brother 
 departed, and so on. He left a good crop of debts behind him, 
 and a large family." 
 
 " Poor Bellasis ! " mused the widow. " He was always too fond 
 of champagne, and ivould take the miss at loo." And she went oii 
 playing with Mouche. 
 
 " Ephraim Tigg," went on Mr. Sims, " was the worst. As I 
 told you, he is a Easper." 
 
 " AVhat is a rasper ? " asked the widow, elevating her eyebrows. 
 " Tou would be one if you had only a little more decision. He 
 vowed vengeance, and was going to do all sorts of thiogs. But 
 for some little business transactions of old date between us, when 
 my name was Des— " he checked himself—" when it wasn't 
 Sims, Ephraim might have done all he threatened. But I paid 
 him. I burnt the ugly bit of paper, and there's an end of that 
 business. But he knows what he ought not to know, ma'am, and 
 that's a red lamp as big as a pumpkin." 
 
 " Is he a man to kill, to gain over, or to tell lies to ? and what 
 should be done to prevent him annoying us ? " 
 
 "He is a man," remarked Mr. Sims, with much calmness, "to 
 die. He is a man to have another paralytic stroke. He's had 
 one, and I think the next will be pretty nearly his good-by to 
 stamped paper. He's got just about strength enough to creep 
 into a witness-box, and that's all. He's got a hundred thousand 
 pounds, lives in a kitchen, and feeds on the rats and blackbeetles 
 that swarm in it, I think. I never did see such an old atomy. 
 No ; there's nothing to be feared from him, unless" — he paused 
 in his speech, and spoke very slowly and deliberately — "unless 
 you've been making him any more morning calls, ma'am."
 
 MRS. ARMYTAGE IS AS MUCH AT HOME AS EVEIl. 89 
 
 "On my boiiour, no!" asseverated Mrs. Armytage, turning 
 nervously among her cushions. "I never saw the old brute but 
 once, and never vrish to see him again." 
 
 " Then you can go to bed and sleep comfortably on your 
 honour. Do you want me any more to-night ? I think I shall 
 go to the play." 
 
 " Yoto go to the play!" repeated his patroness, in some asto- 
 nishment. " AVhy, you don't go once in six months. AVhat on 
 earth has put that into your head ? " 
 
 " Well, I like theatricals," Mr. Sims explained, slowly rubbing 
 his hands together. " They'i'e vrarra, aud bright, and cheap ; and 
 you can let the people on the stage talk away without bothering 
 yourself. Then you can look at the people in the boxes ; and 
 you're so close-seated in the pit, that you can't well help hearing 
 all that your neighbours have got to say among themselves. Oh, 
 I like the play! I used to be fond of going to chapel; but it's 
 the audience there who are acting, and you can't tell what they 
 are really up to." 
 
 " I think I know where you would like to be much better, 
 Sims," his mistress observed, with good-humoured contempt. 
 " AVhat a pity there is no hazard left, no roulette, uo rouge- 
 et-noir !" 
 
 Mr. Sims shrugged his shoulders, and was silent ; but a tiny 
 red spot on either cheek showed that the widow's lance had hit 
 home. 
 
 " Well, go to the play, most virtuous Sims," Mrs. Armytage 
 resumed, with a slight yawn. " If you want any thing to drink, 
 they will give it you down-stairs. Please come to me very early 
 in the morning, and send Eeine to me." 
 
 She waved her hand in gracious dismissal, and Mr. Sims, with a 
 jerk that may have been meant for a bow, turned on his heel, 
 unlocked the door, and departed. He walked gingerly along the 
 richly carpeted corridor of the hotel, stopping ever and anon 
 before some particular door, and studying the number with a look 
 of owl-like wisdom. He also meditated for full three minutes 
 before a vast pyramid of bedroom candles, and meeting a pretty 
 chambermaid bade her good night in a fatherly manner. To the 
 waiter, whose life seemed to be passed in torch-bearing, and who
 
 90 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 ■was just lighting up a county magistrate in a private room, to 
 imparted his lady's behests ; and as the bells began to ring for 
 somebody to tell somebody that number eleven's maid was 
 wanted, Mr. Sims stepped into Euston Square. 
 
 " A clever woman, but rash, and cannot resist her impulses," 
 he soliloquised,— "her One impulse, at least. That is irresistible, 
 and will be the ruin of her. Who can overcome one's little fancy? 
 I can't. With proper management that woman ought to be a 
 Eussian archduchess, at least ; but she'll end badly, I fear, all 
 througli impulse." 
 
 He was decidedly the most retiring and least ostentatious of 
 mankind, Mr. Sims. He walked all the way from Euston Square, 
 through Covent Garden, to the Strand, and was positively not 
 above supping off a dozen oysters, at a stall beneath the pillars of 
 Clement's Inn. Then, after a sober libation of stout, he resumed 
 his walk westward. 
 
 " No hazard left ! " he thought. " Iso hazard, eh ? not a tiny 
 nook and corner where a gentleman from the Continent can sport 
 a fifty ? Well, we'll have a try." 
 
 Mr. Sims went to the play, but he passed both the Haymarket 
 and Adelphi theatres without availing himself of the privileges of 
 half-price. "Where he went to, what play he saw, and in how 
 many acts, and who were the players, it is no business of mine 
 to inquire. 
 
 The lady's-maid came, disrobed her mistress, and went back to 
 long-protracted vigils of sugar-and-water and M. Xavier de 
 Montepiu. Mrs. Armytage did not read ; but it was late ere she 
 sought her couch in the adjoining bed-chamber. They brought 
 her a little carafon of Maraschino, and she sipped a tiny glassful 
 now and then. She had drawn an easy chair to the fire, and 
 wrapped in her China silk peignoir had got to her old trick of 
 toasting her little feet at the fire. There were no lottines to toast 
 now, and the little feet, covered with a film of open worked silk, 
 looked ravishing in the morocco slippers. 
 
 "It is a hard life," she said to herself. "A convict, or a 
 minister of state, can't be much harder worked. It is all sowing 
 and ploughing, and harrowing, and weeding, and what will the 
 harvest be ? Do I shrink ? do I falter ? am I afraid ? jSTo ; but
 
 Mils. AUMYTAGE IS AS MUCH AT HOMR AS EVER. 91 
 
 the life is very "wearisome. It makes my head ache. It makes 
 my heart ache. I suppose I have a heart as vrell as other people. 
 I know I feel it more than other people do, and that I shall die 
 some day of palpitation, or aneurism, or something. Heigho ! 
 heigh ! " 
 
 The little dog, snoozling on the hearthrug, lifted up his blink- 
 ing eyes, as though in surprise at the unwonted sounds. Screams 
 and laughter he was accustomed to — but sighs ! 
 
 " Down, Mouche," his mistress cried pettishly, as though 
 offended that the animal had heard her. " What was it that the 
 stupid tract said at the railway ? " she went on cogitating. 
 "'AVhere are you going?' Do the good people know where 
 they are going ? I should like to be good, but I can't. I used 
 to scream, ' I will be good ! I will be good !' as a child, when they 
 punished me ; but I never could be good when the smart was 
 over. I suppose it isn't in me. There must be some pleasure, 
 though, in being able to sleep without horrid dreams, in being 
 able to walk without looking over one's shoulder every five 
 minutes. Good people pray. Where is the good of my praying ? 
 Will the words of a prayer help me ? My thoughts used to 
 wander away from the words of the service at church. What am 
 I to do, where am I going, and where am I to go ? " 
 
 She uttered these words against her wicked will, and aloud. 
 The innermost voice had started up unbidden, and overwhelmed 
 her with the imnerious suddenness of its summons. It was not a 
 still small voice — the creeping uneasiness of conscience: — that 
 had been stifled long ago. No ; this was a sharp, harsh cry. It 
 seemed as though her name were pronounced close to her, — as if 
 some one said, " Florence Armytage, Florence Armytage, where 
 are you going ? " 
 
 Among the trinkets and the gold-bedizened scent-bottles of her 
 dressing-case, in the next room, was a little crystal phial, carefully 
 stoppered, and half-full of a dark liquid. She opened it, and, 
 holding it from her, allowed its vapid odour to exhale. 
 
 " But a little courage, and it would all be over. Bah ! 'tis 
 an idiot's resource to kill oneself. I may win the grand coxip, 
 and leave this life. But that isn't it. I haven't the courage." 
 
 She never lied to herself; she was too clever.
 
 92 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 " Why can't I cry ? " she exclaimed passionately, looking at 
 herself as in the mirror at Paris. " Why can't I squeeze a few 
 tears out ? I never could. That white-faced puss at Goldthorpe 
 can whine and sob. I can't even weep when I think of Hugh, 
 Am I to begin to learn whimpering now ? " 
 
 She had yet some little business to go through ere she sought 
 her bed. From a secret drawer in her jewel-case she took a 
 common red penny memorandum-book and opened it. The 
 columns were full of figures in English and foreign moneys. 
 These she dwelt long ov^er. Then she turned to another page 
 with writing on it. 
 
 "Amiens, St. Lazare, La Bourbe, Nice, Preston, Philadelphia, 
 Kilmainham, Kirkdale, Lewes, Manheim, Milan : a pretty cata- 
 logue ! " she said, with a bitter smile. "Ah, I have been a great 
 traveller. AVhere is the journey to end ? " 
 
 Once more, as though dreading to go to rest, she went from her 
 sleeping to her sitting room, took writing materials, and, sitting 
 down, penned a long letter on foreign post paper. She carefully 
 folded it, gummed the envelope all round, sealed it, and addressed 
 it thus : 
 
 "Dominique Cossoii, 
 Fiei'e la'ique, 
 Aux Peres Maristes des Bonnes-CEuvres, 
 
 Hoogendracht (pres Louvain), 
 Brabant, 
 
 Belgique." 
 
 " Sims must post this the first thing in the morning," she said 
 almost gaily, as she rose from her seat. And then for the second 
 time I leave her to her bed, and to Sleep, which comes alike to 
 the evil and the just, to the criminal in his cell and the anchorite 
 on his pallet, and covers all over with the Death that is in the 
 midst of Life.
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 SHEPHERD AND SHEEP. 
 
 Sixteen' months Lad passed, and crazy fanatics who had pre- 
 dicted the end of the world before tlie year w-as out — not forsrettioo- 
 to take houses at long leases meanwhile — found for the thou- 
 sandth time that their reckoning was confusion, and that their 
 prophecies were wind. The old world went on, and men children 
 were born to supply the loss of those who had been taken away ; 
 and kings and cadgers alike gave up the ghost ; and Death as 
 usual met the wedding guest on the threshold, and with unvarying 
 politeness bade him pass in first, as there would be plenty of time 
 for him. 
 
 It was the merry month of May of the year eighteen fifty-one, 
 and London was in a frenzy about the Great Exhibition. The 
 glass-house in Hyde Park has, directly, nothing to do with the 
 conduct of this story ; and you will hear little about it from me. 
 But the influence of the fever that raged in London was felt in 
 the remotest portions of the English provinces. A gadding-about 
 mania seized on all ranks and conditions of men. Women went 
 up in droves to London professedly to see the Exhibition — 
 actually to stare at the dresses and bonnets in the shop windows. 
 Ancient hedgers and ditchers who were scarcely yet familiar with 
 the high street of their market town, were put into clean smock- 
 frocks, and paraded by their pastors through the giant metropolis, 
 and the wonderful structure in the park. The very paupers in 
 rural workhouses were dressed in their best, taken to town, per- 
 mitted to croon forth feeble notes of admiration in nave and 
 transept, and were regaled with unwonted meat and beer. Some 
 such kindly feelings from the rich towards the poor are generally 
 brought forth by great public festivals. He who has all is even 
 anxious to let him who has nothing share — in the infinitesimal
 
 94 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 degrees. Exclusive possession palls. If Flag gets a couple of 
 tliousand pounds as prize-monej, he flings fourteenth-class half-a- 
 crown as his portion. A man who has a blue diamoud, or a 
 cabinet full of Eafaelles, is frequently most liberal in permitting 
 the gratuitous inspection of his treasures. 
 
 It has been said that the Great Exhibition made itself felt all 
 over the land. The press and the post-oflSce between them dis- 
 tributed hundreds of thousands of journals teeming with woodcuts, 
 and glowing with descriptions of the rare contents of Paxton's 
 Palace. Every rustic Paul who found himself in London wrote 
 letters to his kiusfolk. The humours of the Great Exhibition and 
 " Lunnon town " were put into the Lancashire dialect, and 
 chanted by the descendants of those Troubadours, of whom Tim 
 Bobbin was the Blondel. Somersetshire, Westmoreland, York- 
 shire, Northumbria had ballads in their vernacular about the great 
 carnival of iudustry in the capital — ballads which would have 
 delighted Prince Lucien Solomon Bonaparte. This was the time 
 when lads ran away from home to seek their fortune, and expect- 
 ing to find Loudon paved with gold, discovered that pockets might 
 be so lined, but that the streets themselves were jagged and 
 muddy ; and so, Bow Bells seeming to chime out more to the 
 eifect that they were fools for their pains, than to bid them turn 
 again and be Lords Mayor of London, betook themselves to their 
 homes, and were feasted on the fatted calf, or the cold shoulder, 
 as the case might be. It was in all respects — you, who remember 
 it, Avill agree with me — an exceptional year. Gentlemen fell in 
 love at first sight, not in three-volume novels, but in actual 
 reality, with young .ladies they met in railway carriages, or at 
 Osier's Crystal Fountain, and married them out of hand. Free- 
 masons from Mount Atlas fraternised with Freemasons from 
 Primrose Ilill, and the Polish Lodge entertained a Babel of 
 foreign brethren. The oldest liahitues of the Park and the Opera 
 were forced to confess that they saw daily and nightly in Eotten 
 E.OW and the Halls amazons and amateurs with whose faces they 
 were not familiar ; and the learned in social statistics ascertained 
 for a fact, that from May to September — such was the molli- 
 fying efi'ect of the season — vast numbers of born and well- 
 born Englishmen and Englishwomen made no scruple of cou-
 
 SHEPHERD AND SHEEP. 95 
 
 versing with persons to -whorQ tliey had never been formally 
 introduced. 
 
 But, as in the midst of a railway loopline, or between its 
 parallels, or midway between its horns, you shall find some hamlet 
 — some small country town sometimes — which has no station, no 
 omnibus nor fly communication, no gas, no police, and no roads 
 much better than bridle-paths, and which is, to all intents and 
 purposes of civilisation, five hundred years behind ths age; so 
 down in the county of Kent was there a village whose iuhabitants 
 did not trouble themselves in the slightest degree about the Great 
 Exhibition — and many of them had but a very hazy and uncertain 
 knowledge of what an exhibition was — at all. 
 
 This place was called Swordsley ; and the rector of Swordsley 
 was the Eeverend Ernest Goldthorpe. The village was of some 
 size, its population numbering nearly nine hundred. It was not 
 a specially ignorant or uncouth village ; it was simply indifierent 
 to all that went on out of its precincts. If a Swordsley man had 
 designed the House of Eame in Hyde Park, or the heir of the lord 
 of the manor of Swordsley — who was a Captain in the Guards — 
 had been sent to the House of Correction for assaulting a police- 
 man in Eotten Eow, the villagers might have taken some interest 
 in the AVorld's Eair. As it was, none of those in whom they 
 interested themselves had anything to do with it ; so they left the 
 Great Exhibition to its own devices. 
 
 To the inhabitants of this tranquil place the world was bounded 
 by the limits of Swordsley parish. The ancient cathedral town of 
 St. Becketsbury was not very far distant, — scarce ten miles, in 
 fact ; but that was a matter concerning the rector and his curate, 
 and not the laymen of Swordsley. Tbere was a station at Daisey- 
 bridge, four miles distant, belonging to the South-Eastern Eailway, 
 and the aristocracv of Swordsley might avail themselves of it; but 
 the Swordsleians were profoundly indifferent and all but uncon- 
 scious of the existence of such things as trains and locomotives. 
 An early village bard had made a satirical song, in days gone by, 
 against the railway movement generally, deriding it as a new- 
 fangled invention, and lampooning it as a " Long Tom's Coffin," — 
 a hit which told immensely, more for the sound of the phrase than 
 for its actual signification. When a Swordsley man was pressed
 
 96 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 to accede to a branch line from Daiseybridge through Swordsley, 
 and so on to the little seaport of Sbrimpiiigtou-super-Mare, he 
 ordinarily made answer, " We want none of your Long Tom 
 CoBGns hereabouts," and was supposed thereafter to have irre- 
 trievably demolished his adversary. A sharp lawyer irom St. 
 Becketsbury once threatened the intractable villagers with an 
 Act of Parliament which should compel them to have either a 
 railway, or gas or water pipes, or some other filaments of the 
 crinoline of civilisation ; but ChuiF the saddler, who was the 
 village oracle, and the " Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood" 
 of Swordsley, cried, " Let uu t»'y it. I'll Parliament House un. 
 I'll sow their Acts up like so much pig-skin." And it was univer- 
 sally believed (in Swordsley) that any attempt on the part of the 
 Legislature to coerce Swordsley into light, or cleanliness, or 
 activity, A\ould be met by the erection of barricades, and the 
 invocation of the Patron of battles. 
 
 There was a society, less convivial than conservative and 
 inquisitorial, held at the " Old Dun Horse " tavern, called " The 
 Leave-US-alone Club," in Swordsley. It was particularly active 
 in suppressing new-fangled inventions. It was gtanchly Protec- 
 tionist, had burnt Peel and Cobden in effigy, and debated the 
 propriety of presenting a silver pitchfork to the once illustrious, 
 but now forgotten, champion of costly corn — Chowler. The St. 
 Bccketsbury lawyer, aided by one or two incendiaries among the 
 neighbouring gentry — for at Swordsley, and not for the first time 
 since the Creation, it was the patricians who were strong liberals, 
 and tlie yeomen and peasantry who wei'e bigoted Tories — had 
 actually got a Bill affecting Swordsley sufficiently into work as to 
 have complied with the standing orders of the House. There 
 was an indignation meeting among the villagers, and a secret 
 sederunt of the " Leave-us-aloue Club," Avho, from their own 
 funds, despatched a deputation, consisting of Chuff" the saddler, 
 Muggeridge, mine host of tlie " Old Dun Horse," and Scrase the 
 corn-chandler, to Loudon, with strict injunctions to spare neither 
 labour, expense, nor physical force — even to the "puncliing" of 
 the St. Becketsbury lawyer's head — to defeat the abhorred mea- 
 sure. The Bill came to nothing, which was a triumph to 
 Swordsley ; but the end of the deputation was curious. The
 
 SHEPHERD AND SHEEP. 97 
 
 delegates were absent a long time, and wrote more than once for 
 remittances to the Club. Miiggeridge informed Mr. Pearkle- 
 borough the grocer (chairman ^;ro tern, of the " Leave-us-aloues ") 
 that parliament business was terribly dry work. On his return 
 he evinced a remarkable taciturnity, merely deigning to observe 
 occasionally that the deputation had had " awful times of it ;" and 
 the face of Mrs. Muggeridge, his spouse, should properly have 
 been as flat as the countenance of a Kalmuck, for, as she informed 
 Miss Chuff", the saddler's daughter, Muggeridge was in the prac- 
 tice, when spoken to, of biting her nose off" from morning till 
 night. There was a dreadful to-do about auditing the account, 
 and the examiners objecting to an item of nine pounds for 
 " sundries," Mr. Muggeridge offered to fight the committee all 
 round (four being a quorum) ; and as the host of the " Old Dun 
 Horse " was a notoriously hard hitter, the auditors perpended 
 and passed his account. Two members of the deputation 
 remained for a considerable period unaccounted for, which neces- 
 sitated the sending of fresh envoys to the capital in search of 
 them. Chuff" the saddler was discovered at an hotel in Old Palace 
 Tard, reduced by a reckless course of hot suppers and heavy 
 lunches to a state of semi-idiocy. He was rapidly being converted 
 to liberalism by an unscrupulous attorney's clerk who used the 
 coff'ee-room ; but was rescued by his friends just in time to save 
 his political principles and discharge his bill before it grew too 
 heavy to b§ paid anyhow. 
 
 The catastrophe which overtook the third delegate, Scrase the 
 corn-chandler, was even more tragic. Scrase was a vain old 
 fellow, of a bilio-sanguineous temperament, and was a continual 
 butt for the shafts of Love. The wretched man had the folly to 
 propose marriage to a lady who sang comic duets at an East-end 
 coffee-room with a negro vocalist, who said that he came from. 
 Alabama, but who sprang in reality from Agar Town. Love, 
 harmony, and Jamaica rum were his ruin. The great breach-of- 
 promise case of He la Quaverdille (otherwise Siphkinf) versus 
 Scrase must be fresh in the recollection of my middle-aged readers. 
 Heliogabalus Jones, Q.C., was for the plaintiff". AVumpkius, 
 Q.C., made nothing of the defence. The judge — he was a joking 
 judge, and his father had been a hanging judge — riddled Scrase 
 
 H
 
 98 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 •with witticisms upon his love-letters. The jury gave swingeing 
 damages. Scrase was hooted bv the populace, and pursued to a 
 cab by those infuriated females with umbrellas, who always seem 
 ready to enact gratuitously the part of out-door Nemesises to the 
 courts of justice. Scrase sold his business, paid the damages and 
 costs, and retired in dudgeon to St. Becketsbury, where he set up 
 as a stationer, dealt in cheap literature, and became the most 
 rampant of radicals. His former comrades sorrowed sternly over 
 the defection of this Erastian. His name was erased from the 
 club-book, — to add to his crimes, he had left three half-years' 
 subscription unpaid, — and over his portrait (painted by Spillme- 
 gelp, author of the restorations in the sign of the " Old Dun 
 Horse ") was wafered a copy of BelVs TVeeMy Messenger. 
 Unconsciously, the Leave-us-alones followed the example of the 
 Venetian counsellors, who hung the black veil over the picture of 
 Marino Faliero. 
 
 It was to wrestle with these somewhat obstinate and prejudiced, 
 albeit very worthy people, that the Eeverend Ernest Goldthorpe 
 came to Swordsley. The living was a handsome one, certainly : 
 that was something ; but had Ernest not been an upright and con- 
 scientious man, anxious and determined to do his duty in his state 
 of life, the first month of his residence in Swordsley would have 
 disgusted him with his preferment, and he would have left the place 
 to a curate, and only regarded it as a milch-cow. The Eeverend 
 Ernest Goldthorpe took a difierent view of his obligations. He 
 would fertilise, he thought, this intellectual desert ; he would clear 
 away all this tangled jungle of bigotry and prejudice. So, axe in 
 hand, he walked into the wilderness, and began to lay about him 
 lustily. He was not unpopular at first. The former rector had 
 been deaf, paralytic, and all but blind. There had been a curate 
 who stammered, a curate who couldn't pronounce his H's — the 
 Swordsley men, although they had a pretty broad dialect of their 
 own, were vastly critical as to cockneyisms, — and a curate with a 
 red head — all abominations in the sight of Swordsley. Ernest at 
 first made himself liked. He preached eloquently ; he visited the 
 sick sedulously ; he kept port wine in his cellar much more for the 
 poor and ailing than for himself: and on Sundays, after morning 
 service, he would give his arm to some fair parishioner, and, arrayed
 
 SHEPHERD AND SHEEP. 99 
 
 in his gown and bands, conduct her through the churchyard. The 
 Swordslc}^ people were pleased at this. " I like to see a parson in 
 his cassock — it shows he knows his station," was the sao^e obser- 
 vatioa made by Mr. Pearkleborough the grocer. As for Ernest's 
 liberality, the villagers did not care much about his open purse. 
 They were very well to do. They had scarcely any paupers ; and 
 the infirm were mostly provided for by their relatives, or in the 
 ancient almshouses of the Battle-axe Makers' Company. Many 
 bed-ridden octogenarians turned rtp their noses at the rector's 
 port wine ; and as for the flannel petticoats which his housekeeper 
 made for them, they preferred their own hooded cloaks, dyed iu 
 grain. The neighbouring farmers, who had been totally ruined at 
 intervals during the half-century, were generally very wealthy ; 
 and "purse-proud Swordsley " was a by-word to the country- 
 side. 
 
 It was an evil hour for Ernest Goldthorpe, so far as his profes- 
 sional peace of mind was concerned, when he became by his 
 brother's lamented death heir to the title and the vast treasures of 
 Mammon. "When the season of mourning was drawing to a close, 
 the gentry of the vicinity made a point of offering him their more 
 than tacit congratulations. A rector already passing rich, and 
 who in all human probability would be a baronet and a million- 
 naire, was not a person to be slighted. The great country families 
 called assiduously on the incumbent of Swordsley. He was un- 
 married, and tlie fact of how eligible a match he was did not escape 
 the notice of numerous wary mammas. But in propoi'tion as the 
 consideration in which he was held among those of his own degree 
 increased, so did it decline and diminish among his immediate 
 parishioners. They began to sneer at his bounty as ostentation, 
 to stigmatise his shy and reserved demeanour as pride. The surest 
 way of making a shy man proud is to tell him of his haughtiness. 
 ^y somewhat of the feeling, si vult decipi, decipiatur, one feels in- 
 clined, iu sheer retaliation, to become distant and austere. The 
 gulf between the rector and his flock widened every day ; and it 
 wanted but one element of discord to make it impassable. The 
 men and, worse than all, the women of Swordsley began to take 
 exception to the Eeverend Ernest Goldthorpe's doctrine. The 
 unlucky young man had a taste for medisevai art, and he held 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 notions somcTrhat advanced of the kind advocated in certain 
 famous Tracts for certain troubled Times. If he was not a Puseyite, 
 at least his congregation declared he was one ; and he did a good 
 deal towards encouraging the belief. At his own expense he had 
 done much towards restoring the fine old early English church of 
 St. Mary -la-Douce, at Swordsley ; but the clearing away of the 
 hideous wainscoatiug flaming with the golden names of departed 
 churchwardens, and the rubbing off tlie smearing of whitewash 
 which concealed some fine old fresco paintings, — both parts of the 
 process by which the church had been " beautified " during the 
 Georgian era, — involved him in unseemly broils with his own 
 churchwarden, and caused him to be denounced by the " Leave- 
 us-aloue Club" as a pervert, an Escobar, an Ignatius Loyola, who 
 w-as moved by the horrid intention of once more inflicting Popery, 
 brass money, and wooden shoes on this free and Protestant land. 
 Presuming to decorate the church with evergreens at Easter and 
 Whitsuntide as well as at Christmas time, his harmless horticul- 
 ture raised a shout about pagan idolatry and popish mummeries. 
 He preached in a surplice, whereupon Pearkleborough the grocer 
 positively wrote, and had printed at St. Becketsbury and circulated 
 at his own expense, an eight-page pamphlet, headed " The AVolf 
 in the Eold." It commenced with " Remember the Smithfield 
 fires," and ended with the quotation from King John about Italian 
 priests tithing and tolling in the English dominions. Ernest had 
 spent much more in Swordsley than he had ever got out of it ; 
 but no account was taken of that. Eiually, he] put the climax to 
 his olFences in the eyes of his parishioners by presenting one of 
 the Sunday-school children with a prize in the shape of a church- 
 service, on which was embossed a cross in crimson morocco. It 
 was about this time that the vestry wrote to the bishop about 
 Ernest's proceedings — his "shameful goings on," as tliey were 
 termed in Swordsley. They likewise memorialised the Battle-axe 
 Makers' Company ; and Chuff threatened the rector that " some 
 of these fine mornings he would have him in the privy council." 
 I have not dwelt on the commotion raised when Ernest took eight 
 little boys from frightening birds and picking up stones in the 
 fields, arrayed them in little white nightgowns worn over their 
 clothes, taught them the Gregorian chant, and called them bis
 
 SIIEPIIERD AND SHEEP. 101 
 
 choristers. Less need also is there to mention the rumour that 
 he had set up the tribunal of Penitence in his back parlour, 
 and that by dint of strong cordials and pecuniary gratifications, 
 he had induced old Biddy Cubley, the habitually inebriated 
 washerwoman of the village, to confess her manifold sins and 
 do penance. 
 
 It may thus be imagined, when this state of things is borne in 
 mind, that the inhabitants of Swordsley had quite enough to do in 
 the montli of May, 1851, without troubling themselves about the 
 Great Exhibition. The very few comments that were bestowed 
 upon it generally concurred in the opinion that Exhibitions were 
 a dangerous encouragement to foreigners, and a consequent up- 
 holding of papistry. The odmm theologicum against Ernest alone 
 was sufficient to engross all the evil passions of the little com- 
 munity ; their better sympathies were, I trust, reserved for their 
 relations and friends. What slight surplus of hatred there re- 
 mained was liberally bestowed, in fee simple, upon Miss Magdalen 
 Hill, who, desirous of being near her almost kinsman Ernest, had 
 for the last six months resided at the old mansion-house, known 
 as " The Casements," not half a mile from Swordsley on the St. 
 Becketsbury Eoad. The Casements, which was said to have fifty- 
 two windows, named each after a popish saint, which had been the 
 hiding-place of one of the Gunpowder-Plot conspirators, which 
 had stood a siege (for the king) during the civil wars, and was said 
 to be triply haunted, through an agreeable series of assassinations 
 which had occurred there, — this old Elizabethan brick-house, with 
 stone gables and quaint terraces and complicated carvings, belonged 
 to Lady Talmash. There was no mistake about Lady Talmash's 
 theological views. She was of the very highest church, and very, 
 very old, and very arbitrary, and very active, and one of Ernest 
 Goldthorpe's most influential supporters. She had known Mag- 
 dalen from a child, and regarded the young woman with a sincere 
 aflTection. My lady was a widow, and wealthy. Before Magdalen 
 had come to cheer her solitude, she had had no other companions 
 save a High-Church parrot, — which had been taught to scream 
 " Canting Roundheads," and "wicked old Pope," with much dis- 
 tinctness of utterance and acrimony of tone,— a rigid old lady's 
 maid, and her own temper, which was of a somewhat hot and
 
 102 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 intolerant nature. Lady Talmash was only too glad to have Mag- 
 dalen near her. The girl was rich in her own right, and knew that 
 she could not be looked upon as a dependent. Above all, she was 
 near her adopted brother's church and flock, and persuaded herself 
 that she could find congenial and useful employment for herself 
 within Ernest's sphere of action. 
 
 Magdalen was very pale and thin, — much thinner and paler 
 since the awful day when the news came from Armentieres, — and 
 her eyes had a strange look ; but to most men she seemed emi- 
 nently beautiful ; and, although the otiier sex would rarely admit 
 her good looks, they were generally unanimous in being jealous of 
 her. "What did she want, they asked, in Swordsley ? She had 
 lost one husband among the Sons of Mammon ; was she seeking a 
 new one in the heir to the title and the riches ? If Ernest Grold- 
 thorpe wanted a wife, and if he disdained to seek a partner among 
 the ancient county gentry of Kent, he could surely find one 
 among his fine friends in London. Everybody knew that Mag- 
 dalen was sensible and good ; but the knowledge of her many 
 excellent qualities rather embittered the feeling against her than 
 otherwise. Had she been perfect, she would not have escaped 
 censure ; but it was a point in favour of her detractors that she 
 missed perfection by one fatal failing — the weak pinion in the wings 
 of the fallen angels : Pride. Ernest was merely shy ; Magdalen 
 was really proud. The settled melancholy which had come upon 
 her since the death of her afiiauced husband rendered her even 
 more frigid and repellent. She had been sarcastic ; she was so no 
 more, but silent and preoccupied. The girls who came to The 
 Casements when, as rarely happened, Lady Talmash gave a party, 
 or who returned the old lady's visits, could find nothing to talk 
 about Avith Magdalen Hill. They dared not prattle about fashions 
 and flounces to her. It was known that she held balls, operas, 
 and flirtations to be sinful. They could not talk to her about the 
 Early Fathers, about the Council of Trent, or German art or 
 Gothic architecture. Not that her hose was in the slightest degree 
 tinged with blue. She knew much theoretically and practically ; 
 but with men who could converse with her on letters or on art she 
 disdained to interchange information or ideas. Even Ernest, who, 
 enthusiast as he was on High Church and mediaeval revivalism,
 
 SHEPHERD A^"D SHEEP. lOS 
 
 was not devoid of a certain amount of timidity, -was half afraid of 
 the beautiful sister-in-law that should have been. You see that 
 one can be afraid of other things besides ghosts or dragons ; and 
 to the strongest mind it might be unpleasant to sit up all night 
 in a sculpture gallerj', with the moonbeams glancing on Pallas 
 Athene's marble figure. Magdalen seldom went to the rectory ; 
 but she ruled the rector's domain, both there and in the church. 
 She gave audience at The Casements to stainers of glass windows, 
 to carvers of rood-screens and bench-ends, to embroiderers of altar- 
 cloths, to makers of brass sconces and emblazoned candles. To 
 her was due the episcopal Eaculty which permitted the erection in 
 tlie chancel of St. Mary-la-Douce, of a magnificent memorial, in 
 the form of a window, to Captain Hugh Jasper Goldthorpe, de- 
 ceased. She controlled the discipline of the Eeverend Ernest's 
 own proprietary schools ; punished or rewarded the children as 
 she liked, — much to the discontent of the schoolmaster and 
 mistress, — and deluged the school library with little mediaevalisiug 
 tracts about Saxon saints and Cappadocian martyrs. In the Sun- 
 day-school the young ladies of the environs, and even the trades- 
 men's daughters of the village who were teachers there, made a 
 bold stand against her sway. They rapped the knuckles of the 
 girls she fjivoured, they presented surreptitious plum-cake to those 
 who fell under her displeasure. Miss Chuff, driven to desperation 
 by her assumption, stoutly demanded one Sunday morning whether 
 Miss Hill thought herself Empress of Eooshia ? Magdalen vouch- 
 safed no response ; but Chuff, speedily collapsing into floods of 
 tears, and adding irrelevant riders to her queries by demanding 
 whether she was a door-mat for Miss Hill to wipe her feet upon ; 
 whether 1-ter connections were not to the full as respectable as 
 Miss Hill's, although they were not money-grubbers that lived on 
 the taxes got by grinding poor people's faces ; with similar incon- 
 gruities — she was easily vanquished by the stately silent lady, who 
 withered people with one glance of her proud eye. 
 
 To the poor, Magdalen was a sedulous benefactor and an affec- 
 tionate friend. But she could not get on even with them. The 
 bed-ridden old women regarded her bounty with greater distaste 
 than they did that of the rector. They would not look at her 
 tracts: they did not care for her cold, measured accents when she
 
 104 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 read to them. They wanted something warm and comforting, they 
 said, and they found only coldness and discomfort in Magdalen's 
 ministrations. They hesitated to take the remedies she brought 
 them. They regarded her with vagne distrust. Even the curly- 
 headed little children were afraid of the proud, severe lady in 
 mourning who never smiled. She felt, though she was straining 
 every nerve to do her duty as a Christian woman, that there was 
 something that impeded her progress, — something that she could 
 not remove or quell. "Where was she going ? Truly she was 
 pursuing the narrow, thorny path that should probably lead to 
 reward ; but was her mode of travelling the right one ? Should 
 she have trampled on the brambles and the sharp pebbles instead 
 of gently moving them aside ? She asked herself the question 
 sometimes, — asked if she could not conciliate instead of command- 
 ing, invite instead of repelling. Pride stepped in and foi-bade 
 further research ; and in pride and silence she wrapped herself up, 
 and went on her lonely way. The women, as I have hinted, 
 regarded her with a lively aversion ; the gentlemen admired, but 
 gradually avoided her. She was a little too freezing. Nov/ and 
 then William the dragoon, whose regiment was by this time in 
 garrison at St. Becketsbury, came over to The Casements. He 
 was highly popular, even with Lady Talmash, and he could make 
 his brother laugh ; but so soon as he was gone the temporary 
 gaieties of the Elizabethan mansion were discontinued, and Mag- 
 dalen resumed her icy empire, not only there, but at the rectory 
 and the church. " One doesn't like sitting next to a snowball, you 
 know," the jolly young fox-hunting squires used to say ; so Lady 
 Talmash's severe although hospitable table became as deserted as 
 she liked it to be, — not for economy's sake, but for pride. The 
 two women, the old hermit and the young anchorite, used to sit 
 opposite each other in state, eating scarcely anything. The table 
 was loaded with plate ; wine sparkled in the decanters; yet the 
 dinner was more barren than a Barmecide's feast. The butler 
 and his subordinates went through all the forms of a ceremonial 
 dinner ; but they knew that it was given for Pride's sake ; that 
 Pride sat bodkin between the two ladies, and was the only guest 
 that went away filled from that dreary board. 
 
 The Casements was, however, Magdalen's only home. The
 
 SHEPHERD AND SHEEP. 105 
 
 dragoon was wild ; the clergyman was celibate ; none of the other 
 Sons of Mammon were old enough to offer her a home. The 
 position she held was anomalous. The link of the dead man was 
 wanting to bind her to the family who should have been her 
 brothers. She felt this, and mourned, and said nothing. Sir 
 Jasper Goldthorpe had happily recovered the shock brought about 
 by his great grief, and which had culminated in a series of fainting 
 fits at Goldthorpe Manor on the evening of the funeral. But he 
 was sadly shaken. His physicians had insisted that he should 
 temporarily abstain from the cares of business. He went away 
 to Nice, to Naples^ to Malta, with Lady Goldthorpe ; came back 
 in the autumn of 1850 ; once more made his appearance among 
 the clerks in Beryl Court ; but suffered a relapse on the very 
 anniversary of his son's death, and went abroad again. He was 
 now in Belgium, whither he had come from Paris, and was staying 
 at the residence of some great financial dignitary of the Low 
 Countries. His affairs in Beryl Court had gone on prosperously 
 during his absence, and he was richer than ever. But Sir Jasper 
 was expected back : of course, being so rich a man, he had been 
 made a commissioner of the Exhibition, foreman of a jury, and all 
 sorts of things. From ill health he had been unable to attend the 
 opening ceremonial, but he was now convalescent; and on his 
 return Magdalen was to join him in Onyx Square : only for a few 
 days, however, for the girl loathed London and the gilded palace 
 there, and seemed to prefer her residence in the village where she 
 was hated. Had she gone away from Swordsley for good, there 
 would have been probably, with the exception of the rector and 
 Lady Talmash, but one person who would have regretted her 
 absence. That person was the Eeverend Euthyn Pendragon, 
 B.A., the Eeverend Ernest Goldthorpe's curate, and who, in his 
 clumsy fashion, had fallen madly in love with Magdalen Hill.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A LAY BROTHER. 
 
 A LAY Brother came out of the convent on tlie hill, and so by 
 the winding road into tlie valley wliere lay the village of Hoogen- 
 dracht. It was an evening in May, and the far landscape was 
 bathed in mellow hues. A fiit and fair prospect was that Belgian 
 champaign to look upon. Tar as the eye could reach, to east and 
 west the corn-fields ranged and waved, and the warm sun had just 
 begun to sprinkle their green expanse with golden patches — pale 
 gold as yet, and unalloyed by July fierceness. To the south the 
 valley rose again into thick-wooded heights, where the birds held 
 high harmony all day long, and partridges and pheasants might 
 have thanked their stars that Flanders had a code of game-laws 
 as well as England, and that their respite lasted until the latter 
 days of August. Embowered in the woods shone out two or three 
 blocks of white masonry, pierced by many windows, on which the 
 sun gleamed with an arrowy sharpness, and which, I grieve to 
 say, for the sake of the picturesque, were also provided with tall 
 chimneys, from whose tops smoke curled and diapered the wood- 
 land distance. These were cloth factories ; for Hoogendracht was 
 rich in manufacture of woollens. Eight down in the midst of the 
 valley was the straggling village of Hoogendracht proper, with its 
 church of St. Josse-ten-Groode, its fountain, its antique stone 
 cross, and quaint little Town-house, now the quarters of the 
 village mayor. It was girt about by farm premises, rich in kine, 
 in sheep, in pigs, in breweries, in wheelwrights' shops, and in 
 beetroot-crushing mills. Half-way down the winding road which 
 the Lay Brother traversed was the chateau of St. Hendrik, held 
 for ages by the noble family of Vandercoockenhagen, now repre- 
 sented by Wilhelm, twenty-second baron of that name ; and to 
 the north, on the summit of a high hill, the only object, barren,
 
 A LAY BROTHER. 107 
 
 savage, and gloomy to look upon in the wlaole cheerful picture, 
 was the monastery of the Peres Maristes des Bounesoeuvres, — the 
 Marist Fathers of Goodworks, — a religious community of the very 
 strictest discipline and rule of life, and who were generally con- 
 sidered to be a succursal offshoot of the stern ascetics of La 
 Trappe. 
 
 When you had turned your back to the grey, timeworn abode 
 of the monks, and looked around to the corn-fields swelling in 
 lazy undulations ; to the umbrageous thickets where the partridges 
 and pheasants rejoiced and the cloth factories nestled ; to the 
 prosperous village in the middle of the vale, and on whose southern 
 side the little river Dracht babbled and struggled, all seemed 
 happy, smiling Peace. Beyond that bare hill not an inch of 
 ground lay waste. What ponds or rivulets the vale had, — tiny 
 tributaries to the Dracht, — were either the elected swimming- 
 baths of ducks and geese, or turned the wheels of mills, or were 
 rich iu roach and dace and trout, sternly tabooed to piscatorial 
 interlopers by threatening notices. The abundant manure-heaps 
 in the farm-yards, the turkeys that gobbled over the scandal of 
 the poultry-yard, the well-stored barns, the sturdy Flemish cocks 
 that continually crowed forth their shrill preans of defiance to all 
 the Grallic cocks beyond Lille and Yerviers, the pigs that grunted 
 a Bi*aban9onne in hassetaille, the sheep that fed, not forty, but four 
 hundred like one, on the beetroot peelings, the fat lazy horses that 
 had grown epicures in pasturage, and tired of grazing, rubbed their 
 noses against palings, or with dull thuds beat now one hoof, and 
 now the other on the turf to while away the time : all these spoke 
 of Peace. The cows were too proud to rise and stalk away as a 
 stranger passed, but looked at him instead with their vast chests 
 prone to the grass and their haunches bent, with a lazy, landed- 
 proprietor kind of air, chewing the cud disdainfully as though 
 they thought, " We are the cows that Cuyp and Karl du Jardin 
 painted in the sheeny fields and the golden sunset, and that 
 Verbeckhoeven paints so well now. We are historic cows. Eeason 
 not about us. Eegard our horns, our mild eyes, our well-set 
 bones, our heaving flanks. Eegard, and pass." 
 
 The chateau of St. Hendrik had been recently redecorated, for 
 the Baron Vandercoockenhagen XXII. was rich, and a nobleman
 
 108 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 of taste. But the old forms and the old carvings liad been well 
 imitated, and the mansion-house had a respectably mediaeval look. 
 It had need to have been renovated. We are in 1851. Five- 
 and-thirtj years before, the chateau of St. Hendrik had been 
 turned inside out. The walls had been riddled by bullets, 
 the roof blown off by grenades, the rich furniture smashed, the 
 windows torn from their frames. Of the orchard only a few 
 blackened 'stumps of apple-trees remained. The bearded barley 
 that was threshing in the baz-n was trampled into a gory mud, 
 and among the parterres of the flower-garden men had hacked 
 and hewed each other until the life-blood floated the tall lilies, 
 and made the red roses pale beside it. Here the warriors of 
 Napoleon the Great had left their sign, and cast their crimson 
 shadow. Here, as there, as far beyond, and to every point of the 
 compass, there had been slaughter and rapine, and burning of 
 houses, and outraging of women, not alone in the year of the 
 Waterloo campaign, but for manv, many ages— almost since 
 Christianity began. For Gaul is divided into parts three, and 
 this was Belgic Gaul, " the cockpit of Europe ; " and men had so 
 cut each other's throats here and hereabouts, for the last sixteen 
 hundred years, that Prffilium would have been a far more appro- 
 priate name for the village in the vale than Hoogendracht. 
 Scarcely a farmer was there iu the place but whose fore-elders 
 had been burnt out or slain, or pillaged by the Eoraans or 
 Frenchmen, Imperialists or Eepublicans : Spaniards, Englishmen, 
 Haliajis, Walloons, Croats, and Pandours had come to this out-of- 
 the-way place to fight. The husbandman could scarcely trace a 
 furrow without turning up a splinter of bone ; and in the church 
 a stately monument to Don Esteban de Lara y Lara, killed iu a 
 skirmish at Hoogendracht a.d. 1580, was neighboured by a 
 humble mural tablet, setting forth in lean English characters that 
 Captain Basil Horton, who fell by a hand-grenade in defending 
 Hoogendracht against the French king's troops a.d. 1707, had 
 been buried (he belonging to the ancient faith) in the adjoining 
 graveyard, and that this memorial had been erected by the High 
 and Mighty Prince John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, to 
 whom the deceased was aide-de-camp. 
 
 Flanders, however, has always been remarkable for a sound
 
 A LAY BROTIIER. 109 
 
 flesh and a healthy skin, and the wounds inflicted upon her 
 speedily heal. So soon as the blood has ceased to flow and the 
 anguish is over, the patient begins to smile again ; and in a year's 
 time or so, scarcely a cicatrix remains to tell of the hideous gash. 
 The husbandmen of Hoogendracht, when they had escaped the 
 conscription, troubled themselves very little with the thought 
 that their fathers had been forced into the ranks to lose their 
 lives in quarrels that did not concern them. Peterkin's beet-root 
 crop was abundant. "What mattered it to Peterkin if his great 
 uncle's acres had been grubbed up, his homestead ruined, and 
 half-a-dozen rufhan soldiers of the Danube or the Douro quartered 
 on him ? Jan walked firmly and trippingly. His ancestor's 
 wooden leg did not lie heavy on his soul. He hummed the 
 Braban9onne at his work, and thought King Leopold the very 
 best sovereign in Christendom, St. Gudule, St. Hendrik, and 
 St. Josse-ten-Groode the very pinks and pearls of sanctity, and 
 Genevieve de Brabant the cynosure of noble damsels. He ate 
 his rye-bread, drank his sour beer, clumped about in his sabots, 
 said his prayers, burnt his tallow-candles to the Virgin, and sold 
 his bees-wax to the dealers at Louvain, kept his kermesses, 
 hoarded his money in earthen pots and worsted stockings, and 
 paid his taxes without grumbling. What more could he do to 
 repeat in his Flemish tongue the spirit, if not the words, of the 
 Latin inscription on the old house in Brussels, " From plague, 
 famine, and war, good Lord, deliver us ! " 
 
 So peace reigned in Hoogendracht, and the corn and flowers 
 grew above the mouldering bones, tlie shattered blades, the rusty 
 ■cannon-balls, and the dinted head-pieces ; and every man lived 
 under the shield of the law, and in the quiet possession of his own 
 flocks and herds, till it should please some conqueror to come and 
 root up Hoogendracht again, and strip every peasant as bare as a 
 forked radish. Meanwhile the place smiled and gladdened every 
 man's eyes to behold it. It might have gladdened those of the 
 Lay Brother ; but as he walked he kept them bent resolutely to 
 the ground. He was a tall and stalwart brother, with a Saxon 
 face, and closely shaven. Ho had not assumed the tonsure, but 
 his hair — what little, at least, could be seen under his coarse 
 woollen cap — was rigidly cropped to his head. For all raiment
 
 110 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 he had a long, loose, amply-sleeved, and hooded frock, of some 
 rough woollen stuff", reaching from his neck to his heels, and 
 girt about his waist by a cord, from which hung neither cross nor 
 rosary. Those simple ornaments of monachism were reserved for 
 the fathers of the convent. His unstockinged feet were thrust 
 into wooden shoes, hay being stuffed into the interstices between 
 his flesh and the rough wood. And so in mean and sordid garb, 
 that had a mixture of the monk and of the farm-labourer in it, 
 the Lay Brother stalked silent and with his eyes cast down. 
 
 His life was a hard one. He was but servus servorum, the 
 slave of the slaves of self-mortification. The intervals between 
 his rude labours, or his menial sprvices, might be filled up in 
 pious meditation ; but he was not yet admitted even to the 
 noviciate. He might remain for life a lay brother ; and his 
 companions in solitude were stolid and ignorant — Flemish boors, 
 in fact, of a serious turn of mind, who were content to hew wood 
 and draw water for the good fathers, without a chance, or indeed 
 a hope, of ever putting on the cowl. The Lay Brother, however, 
 was on a partial equality, so far as his material life was concerned, 
 with the monks. He was allowed to share their toil and their 
 privations. He rose with them in the middle of the night and at 
 dawn to attend mass, and to hear gloomy chants. He stood with 
 them in the refectory, listened during meal-time to the same 
 austere homilies against the lusts of the flesh, read by the Father 
 Prselector, partook standing of the same Spartan diet of lentil- 
 soup, brown bread, black radish, cheese, and cold water. He, as a 
 lay brother, was allowed to eat meat at Easter ; but his comrades, 
 the boors, did not eat it, and he abstained. He worked and 
 vegetated. AVere he to die here, he would again be put on an 
 equality with the brethren, and be thrust into a hole in his rope- 
 girt gabardine, unshrouded and uncofBned, with a plain wooden 
 cross above his grave. For this consummation the Lay Brother 
 devoutly prayed. For him, peace was not in the cheerful vale of 
 Hoogendracht, but in the field behind the convent, on the plateau, 
 which served as a cemetery. 
 
 There were forty Fathers of Woodworks at the convent. They 
 had been dispossessed at the Eevolution, and psrsecuted with 
 unrelenting severity by the elder IS^apoleon, Their passive,
 
 A LAY BROTHER. " 111 
 
 uncomplaining forbearance under unmerited oppression irritated 
 the Emperor and King much more than overt resistance would 
 have done. " Sapristi //' cried his Majesty one day, I will turn 
 every one of these forty shavelings into grenadiers of the Guard. 
 His Imperial Majesty did a great many more quiet little things 
 in the way of despotism — things much more cruel and arbitrary 
 than shooting Palm the bookseller, or sending the brave guerillas 
 of Major Schill, as though they were felons, to the galleys— than 
 even his bitterest enemies in England are aware of. It was thought 
 an act of clemency on his part when he permitted the intractable, 
 albeit inoffensive, Marist Fathers to emigrate to America. After 
 "Waterloo a poor and scattered remnant, most of them feeble and 
 ancient men, but who had preserved the traditions of their 
 discipline intact, came back to Belgium. They were soon di'iven 
 out again by the Dutch dynasty, to whom the Low Countries had 
 been apportioned ; but after 1831, the conciliatory government of 
 Leopold permitted them to return, and to enjoy their humble own 
 again. 
 
 They wore long-cowled frocks, of form like unto that of the lay 
 brothers, but of coarse white flannel. Their feet were bare and san- 
 dalled, their heads, but for the riug of hair at the base'of the skull, 
 shaven. They ate little ; they worked long hours in the rudest em- 
 ployments of field industry. They taught a school of vagrant chil- 
 dren sanctioned by the State, and were the physicians and the re- 
 lieving oificers to the poor. Their farm-lands brought them in rich 
 annual profits, but not one brother had a sou of his own, or even 
 a purse to put it in. The consolation of literary study was even 
 denied them ; and in their wretched cells, on their hard pallets, 
 they were expected to meditate on death, and not to read. They 
 observed the rule of silence with a severity even more frightful 
 than ever reigned in a modern penitentiary ; and the deadliest 
 sin against conventual discipline, was the utterance of a word not 
 warranted by the actual requirements of labour. No ghastly 
 reminders of "Brother, we must die," were interchanged between 
 them. They plied their spades and broke their clods in mute 
 companionship. The Guest-master only, or Fere Kospitalier, 
 and the Eeverend Superior of the convent, who wore a golden 
 chain above his flannel robe, but Hved as poorly and worked as
 
 112 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 bard as Kis brethren — these and the lay brethren who fetched and 
 carried from the village were permitted to speak on matters of neces- 
 sity. So, without books to read, without human converse to hear or 
 smiles to cheer them, without shirts, without shoes, without pocket- 
 handkerchiefs, or sheets, or pillows, — with no money to spend, no 
 meat to eat, no kindly words to soothe their last moments, lived 
 the Marist Fathers of Goodworks — sternly and gloomily, and con- 
 fident that the road they were treading was the sure one, and 
 torturing themselves in hopes of a blessed immortality. The 
 publications of the Tract Society never reached their grim abode. 
 They M'ould have spurned such heretical pamphlets ; and yet I 
 think more than one of these devoted friars might have asked 
 himself with advantage the question, " Where are you going ? " 
 
 Among these forty men who herded in one common living 
 sepulchre, there wei'e the usual number of Fathers Hulbert, 
 Austin, Jerome, Francis, Joseph, Stephen, Philip, Luke, and so 
 forth. They assumed their new baptism in taking the cowl ; but 
 they did not all belong to one nation, and in the great outside 
 world they had gone by very many different names. Thus, 
 Father Hulbei-t may have been a once famous tenor-singer at the 
 Grand Opera in Paris, to whom Emperors had sent diamond 
 snuff-boxes, and who had lain in the alcoves of princesses of the 
 blood royal. Father Austin had been a chamberlain at the court 
 of Leopold ; Stephen a wealthy iron-master at Liege ; Jerome an 
 officer in the Royal Guard ; Joseph a brilliant poet and wit ; 
 
 Francis a fashionable roue; Luke a ■; but there is no need 
 
 to pursue the catalogue further. The world was quite shut out 
 from the convent of Hoogendracht, and all the pomp, pride, and 
 ambition of man disappeared beneath the flannel frock and the 
 hempen girdle. 
 
 As the Lay Brother neared the chateau of St. Hendrik, he 
 found a handsome barouche and pair standing at the gates. M. 
 le Baron Vandercoockenhagen XXII. had visitors staying at the 
 chfiteau, and he was about to take an airing with two guests, one 
 of whom had been an invalid. The horses champed, the postilion, 
 in the lightest of jackets and the brightest of top-boots, clacked 
 his whip. Two spruce outriders reined their horses in, a little in 
 advance. M. le Baron Vandercoockenhagen XXII. was a burly
 
 I 
 
 A LAY JBROTHER. 11'3 
 
 Belgian magniflco, vritli quite a conservatory of coloured ribbons 
 at his button-hole. He came forth from the chateau with a lady 
 and gentleman, whom, with the utmost politeness, he assisted into 
 the barouche. The lady was stout, and had been comely and 
 cheerful, but she looked pale and careworn. The gentleman was 
 tall and broadly built. His hair was light ; his age might have 
 been a little over fifty ; but he stooped and shook painfully, and 
 could only walk with the assistance of a stick. At length the- 
 three were comfortably seated in the barouche ; the Baron waved 
 his hand, the postilion gave another clack to his whip, and the 
 rapid wheels rolled down the winding road. 
 
 The Lay Brother had stood apart, by a wayside cross. "When 
 the party had left, he made to resume his way ; but the gate' 
 porter, a fat !Fleraing, in a gorgeous livery of green and gc-id, 
 recognised, stopped him, and bade him good even. 
 
 The Lay Brother turned his feet towards Hoogendracht, bowed 
 his head and would have passed on ; but the gate-porter was not 
 so to be put off'. 
 
 " Have you heard the news. Brother Dominique ? " 
 
 " We hear no news. I have heard nothing." 
 
 " Our guests leave us to-morrow. They are called to England, 
 And you, whither may you be bound ? " 
 
 " To the post-office, for the Beverend Superior's letters." 
 
 "Ah, the barouche will be there long before you. M. le Baron 
 does not feed his horses with broken bottles ; and when they go 
 it is with a will. Do you know whom our guests are, Brother 
 Dominique ? " 
 
 " I am not permitted to ask. No." 
 
 " Well, they are English ; no conceited beggarly upstarts of 
 Frenchmen. Oh, no. The invalid gentleman you saw is a great 
 English milord, — Sir Jasper Goklthorpe by name, a member of 
 the British parliament, and richer they say than Eothschild." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 "And the helle dame, whom should she be but Miladi Gold, 
 thorpe, his wife." 
 
 " Good evening," said the Lay Brother, turning his eyes to the 
 ground and walking on. 
 
 " Sont-ils riistres, ces frcrcs Iciiqiies ? " muttered the porter, as 
 
 I
 
 Il4 THE SEVEN SOXS 01? MAMMON. 
 
 he closed the gate. " That Brother Dominique is as surly as 
 a bear. I wonder to Avhat nation that lay brother belongs. He 
 can speak no Flemish, and his French is decidedly not of Paris. 
 Perhaps he is a AValloon." 
 
 "When the Lay Brother arrived at the post-office in the main 
 street of Hoogendracht, the official banded him a packet of letters 
 for the Eeverend Superior. He bowed his head and was going 
 away, when the postmaster called him back. 
 
 " Stay," he said, " there is a letter for you, Brother Dominique, 
 with the English postmark, and in a very pretty female band. 
 Vous etes en honne fortune, mon frere.^'' 
 
 "It is from my sister," observed Brother Dominique coldly; 
 but as he extended his hand for the letter his fingers trembled, 
 and he clutched rather than took it. 
 
 " I don't believe in lay brothers' lay sisters," was the sage 
 remark of the postmaster, as he proceeded to stamp the contents 
 of the outgoing letter-bag. 
 
 The Lay Brother pursued his road back towards the convent 
 on the hill until he had passed the chateau of St. Hendrik by full 
 a hundred yards. Then he drew the letter in a woman's hand 
 from the bosom of his gaberdine, broke the seal, and eagerly tore 
 open the envelope. His pale face was flushed, and his whole 
 frame shook. 
 
 " At last," groaned the Lay Brother, and in the English tongue. 
 " At last. A letter in January, and a letter in May, and sixteen 
 mouths have passed in this prison, and yet no hope."
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 AN EXCEEDINGLY YULGAE, TEESON. 
 
 "What is a gentleman ? "Who is a gentleman ? I pause for a 
 reply. Of course there will be at once as many score thousand 
 answers, indignant, sarcastic, explanatory, and argumentative, to 
 my queries as there are readers to this story. But I must repeat 
 them nevertheless. " "What is a gentleman ? and who, if you 
 please, has a right to be considered one?" Maginn once, dis- 
 cussing the vexed question, quoted an Irish authority, who laid 
 it down that for duelling purposes any one might be considered a 
 gentleman who wore a clean shirt once a week. The present 
 generation is more fastidious, and would not be satisfied with 
 such a standard of gentility. The Byronic idea of a gentleman 
 we are all familiar with : small hands and feet, a high forehead 
 (warranted alabaster), curly hair, and a fine taste for hock and 
 soda-water in the morning ; but when we find a being so endowed 
 squabbling with his wife, recommending Mr. G-rimaldi, the clown, 
 to take soy with his apple-tart, and composing a scurril poem 
 under the inspiration, not of Rhenish wine, but of diluted Geueva, 
 one begins to doubt somewhat of the correctness of the Byronic 
 theory. It is plain, I am afraid, that manners have little to do 
 with making a gentleman — in the world's sense of the term. The 
 Plantagenets ate their meals with their fingers, slept on straw, 
 and did not use pocket-handkerchiefs ; and Charlemagne, not 
 being able to write, was compelled to dip the fore-finger of his 
 glove in ink and smear it over the parchment, when it was neces- 
 sary that the imperial sign-manual should be afiixed to an edict. 
 Imagine " Carolus Magnus X his mark " ! The best-bred men 
 of modern times have often been of the most plebeian extraction. 
 The French Dulve de Noailles-jSToailles confessed that the dancing- 
 master Vestris, if his demeanour was to be taken as a criterion, 
 
 I 2
 
 116 TUK SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 was the most polished gentleman he ever saw; whereas, per contTa, 
 read what St. Simon has to say of the bearish and brutish manners 
 of the great Dukes and Peers of his time. Brummell, the pattern 
 of English patricians, was the son of a petty lodging-house keeper, 
 and the grandson of a menial servant ; — if he ever had a grand- 
 father at all. Again, as to appearance. Take down your Lavater's 
 Physiognomy, and, placing your hand over the names appended 
 to the portraits, just strive by guesswork to determine who are 
 the nobly descended and who the base-born in that long pano- 
 rama of faces. Long odds may be laid that when you come to 
 remove your hand, you will dis-^over that this eagle-nosed, lofty- 
 brotved worthy, who by his countenance should be of the bluest- 
 blood of Castile, is the son of a cobbler ; and that this bull-necked, 
 snub-nosed, thick-lipped, clod-hopping-looking fellow is a grandee 
 of a hundred quarterings, or a prince of an imperial house. Now, 
 do you think I am about to launch into some hotly democratic 
 invective against the folly and fallacy of claims of long descent ; 
 that I am about to quote the "grand old gardener and his wife ; " 
 or ask, with AVat Tyler's crew, who was a gentleman when the 
 gardener delved and his wife span ; or chuckle over the ambas- 
 sador-poet's proposed epitaph ; 
 
 " Ladies and gentles, by your leave, 
 
 Here lies the body of Mattbew Prior ; 
 The son of Adam and of Eve : 
 
 Can Bourbon or Nassau go Ligber ?" 
 
 No : I have not any wish to attempt sarcasm either one way or 
 the other — either about " tenth transmitters of foolish faces," or 
 poor varlets whose blood "has crept through scoundrels ever since 
 the Flood." Blood, quotha ! If 1 am pricked, will not my veins 
 yield the life current ; and if I choose to wear blue spectacles, 
 may I not declare it to be the real tap — the genuine sangre azul? 
 Blood, forsooth ! AVhat are your two-penny-halfpenny Howards 
 and Percys to my ancestry, — to yours, my descendant of five hun- 
 dred cattle-lifters, — to yours, Pitz Bogie designed of Macgilli- 
 cuddy ; to yours, M. de Sidonia, who carry three trumpets proper 
 in memory of your ancestor who helped to blow the walls of 
 Jericho down ? and what are all our boastings of ancient descent 
 compared with those of the Chuggs of Suffolk, who have held the
 
 AN EXCEEDINGLY VULGAR PERSON. 117 
 
 plougli and cracked the clods for twice five hundred years. Let 
 us all be proud of our progenitors, and think ourselves each and 
 severally the very finest gentlemen that ever stepped ; and when 
 a rude person says, " Sir, you are no gentleman," let us answer 
 him, " Sir, you are no judge." 
 
 And yet : "Who is a gentleman ? "What is a gentleman ? The 
 question is as far from solution as ever. I don't know, for one ; 
 but if, as we are generally compelled to do, the general verdict of 
 the world is to be fallen back upon, it is very certain, not only 
 that the Eeverend Ruthyn Pendragon was no gentleman, but that 
 he was, on the contrary, an exceedingly vulgar person. 
 
 There had been curates and curates at Swordsley. The rector, 
 who was deaf, paralytic, and all but blind, had been taken care of 
 for a long period by his relatives, who found the mild and genial 
 climate of Torquay most suited to his infirm state of health. The 
 large revenues of the incumbency had been carefully paid in to the 
 bankers of the Eeverend Mr. Marrowfat — that was the name of 
 the invalid rector ; and the successive curates had been as punc- 
 tually paid their small and not increasing stipends. The evil- 
 tongued, who were neither more nor less numerous at Swordsley 
 than elsew^here, averred that the patroness in ordinary to ecclesias- 
 tical preferment under the Eector of Swordsley was a certain Mrs. 
 Gryphon, by the mother's side a Marrowfat, by conjugal relation 
 the widow of a broken ship-broker, and who was good enough to 
 ofiiciate as housekeeper, companion, and general locum tenens to 
 the infirm clerical gentleman. She did everything for him. She 
 opened his letters and read those which he received ; nay, after the 
 Eeverend Mr. Marrowfat's death, human malignity went so far as 
 to say — in the great probate case of Marrowfiit and AVife versus 
 Gryphon — that this indefatigable widow lady made the rector's 
 will for him, and had it all her own w-ay in making it. This, how- 
 ever, is only by the way. I am afraid that she did appoint the 
 curates, and that the advent of the ecclesiastic who stammered, 
 and of the other one who had no H's, must be laid to her charge. 
 Of the red-headed curate, however, Mrs. Gryphon must be held 
 blameless. He of the scarlet locks was a nominee of the Chuckle- 
 buxes, a rival branch of the Marrowfat family, who obtained 
 temporary dominion over the poor old clergyman during an
 
 118 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 aliseuce of Mrs. Gryphon in London. The widow had a graceless 
 nephew, — a Gryphon, not a Marrowfat, — who, having spent a 
 large legacy, principally in hire of dog- carts, and the purchase of 
 cherry-brandy, shirts of extraordinary pattern, and coloured litho- 
 graphs of eminent dramatic performers, had enlisted in the 
 Hussars, but was speedily bought off from^the draff and husks of 
 the depot at Maidstone by his affectionate'aunt. Having unsuc- 
 cessfully tempted fortune as a commercial traveller for an article 
 in general demand (the celebrated steel-edged wooden razors), as a 
 billiard-marker, and as a frequenter of certain dry skittle-alleys, 
 whither gentlemen of agricultural appearance were brought to 
 play, and where, it is said, they were sometimes drugged and 
 robbed, young Jiipton Gryphon again enlisted ; this time in her 
 Majesty's infantry of the line. He was again bought off; and 
 after enjoying for a short time an appointment in the metropolitan 
 police force, from which he was dismissed for a fault, harmless in 
 itself but highly subversive of discipline, being that of offering to 
 fight his inspector for half-a-crown, this gay youtli became an 
 omnibus conductor, a waiter at a tavern where the hours were 
 rather early than late, and an attendant at fictitious auctions, where 
 his business was to bid for gigantic plated cruet-stands, and, with 
 an air of extreme solicitude, to inspect curiously-mlaid writing- 
 desks, handed round for that purpose on a japanned tea-tray. In 
 this place of business he was ordinarily known by the familiar 
 sobriquet of " Eip the Bonnet." If I have mentioned the pecu- 
 liar phases in tlie career of this sportive young man, it has been 
 merely to mark the strong points of contrast in his character. 
 Eipton Gryphon was exceedingly intelligent. His education had 
 been excellent. He was a good classical scholar, a ready speaker, 
 and he wrote a beautiful hand. These acquirements did not in 
 the least militate against his being, root and branch, a hopeless and 
 incurable scamp. With that odd^' perversity not uncommon to her 
 sex, Mrs. Gryphon positively adored this Jamentable scapegrace ; 
 and as he happened to be at the same time tall, curly-haired, 
 straight of limb, bright of eye, and generally good-looking, the 
 widow declared that her Eipton was born to be a gentleman ; that 
 he would sow his wild oats ; that he should go into the Church, 
 and that a country curacy was the very thing to suit him, pending.
 
 AN EXCEEDINGLY VULGAR PERSON. 119 
 
 of course, his elevation to the episcopal bench. To all appearance, 
 it certainly appeared that the soil of Mr. Ripton Gryphon's moral 
 nature had been exhausted by the cultivation of wild oats, and 
 that unless it lay fallow for a time it was not likely to produce 
 anything but an abundant crop of hemp ; but with the energy and 
 audacity characteristic of a lady accustomed to deal only with 
 weak and timid people, and to work her will upon them, Mrs. 
 Gryphon set about converting a young fellow who was bidding fair 
 to graduate at the hulks into a candidate for holy orders. She 
 found out the easy chaplain to an easy bishop, who had already 
 ordained a gentleman not quite right in his head for a living near 
 the Land's End, and another who was not quite right in his morals 
 for a chaplaincy in the West Indies. Mrs. Gryphon learned to 
 know, as some of us know, and as all of us ought to know, that 
 other means exist for wearing a cassock and bands, and tacking 
 "reverend" to one's name, besides taking a university degree. 
 The easy chaplain recommended her to a tutor for her llipton, — 
 a college man, a ripe scholar, who had taken deacon's orders, who 
 was as proud as Lucifer and as poor as Job, and whose name was 
 Buthyn Pendragon. The graceless nephew was confided to the 
 care of this instructor, and in a quiet retirement at Clapham, 
 supported from the widow lady's funds, did, for a certain period, 
 make some progress in leaving off sack and living cleanly, like a 
 gentleman. What is a gentleman ? It was during the sojourn of 
 Mrs. Gryphon in London, of course in the interests of her protege,. 
 that the Chucklebux faction achieved a momentary triumph ; and 
 the reverend gentleman who had no H's, having married a lady 
 who had two thousand pounds, and so resigned his appointment^ 
 brought in the curate with the red head. Mrs. Gryphon returned 
 to Torquay in a rage, and the shock of her temper was almost too- 
 much for the poor old rector. She was appeased, however, by 
 abject concessions, and the immediate and ignominious dismissal 
 or the entire Chucklebux faction (the danger was imminent ; for 
 there was one Chucklebux who was medical, of the homoeopathic 
 persuasion, and who was also a distinguished amateur will-maker) 
 and she soon resumed her empire over her reverend patient and 
 relative. So hard did this lady work towards the accomplishment 
 of her purpose, so various were her resources, so strong was her
 
 1;20 THE SEVEN SONS 0¥ MAMMON. 
 
 will, SO feeble were those with whom she had to deal, that I for 
 one should not; Lave been surprised if success had crowned her 
 enterprise, and if Kipton Grjphon had at last crept through the 
 hawse-holes on board the ecclesiastical bark. Stranger things 
 have happened, believe me. I am not writing from imagination 
 or without book. All the widow's plots and schemes were, alas, 
 foiled by Eipton Gryphon taking it into his bead to vindicate his 
 natural character. He ran away from Mr. Pendragon, bis tutor, 
 and was not heard of any more. Many a similar scapegrace, 
 whose relatives are vainly inquiring after him, or, through the 
 medium of newspaper advertisements, as vainly entreating him to 
 return, is quietly tried under a false name at some provincial 
 assizes,, and quietly transported, without anybody save some 
 chance gaoler being the wiser for it. " That's a baronet, sir," 
 said a convict's warder to me once on Southsea Common, pointing 
 to a pecuharly villanous-lookiug individual in cross-barred canvas 
 and an oil-skin hat, who was leisurely tickling the turf with his 
 spade, — " that's a baronet, and kep' his 'osses and his 'ounds. 
 But, Lord love you, sir, he ain't at Portsmouth, leastways as his 
 genteel fam'ly tliink. Must live abroad for his 'elth, sir. He's at 
 Paw, in the Pyrenees, a living in his own chatow, is that baronet." 
 But what became of liipton Gryphon there was no deponent to 
 say. He went away, and didn't come back. He may have sub- 
 sided into penal servitude, as has already been hinted. He may 
 have turned up swollen, blue, ghastly, and drowned, in the ooze of 
 some riverain creek, and have passed from a parish dead-house to 
 a parish grave. He may have enlisted again, have died on board 
 a transport, and been flung to the fishes. He may have been 
 murdered. Who knows ? Men pass and pass in the great glass 
 of Life like the Kings in Macbeth's vision; and there is no 
 remembrance of those that have gone before, and no knowledge 
 of those that are to come afterwards. 
 
 "Who, for instance, could have foretold that Euthyn Pendragon, 
 the tutor of the graceless scion of the Gryphons, would have ever 
 become curate of Swordsley ! yet it was his kismet, his fate, to 
 occupy that post. By one of those odd coincidences which are 
 perpetually baffling and perplexing us, Pendragon, having passed 
 into priest's orders, was recommended to the new rector of
 
 AN EXCEEDINGLY VULGAR PERSON. 121 
 
 Swordsley, — poor old Mr. Marrowfat having been gathered to 
 his fathers, — and obtained employment from the Eeverend Ernest 
 Goldthorpe. It is not fitting to tell how the widow, at once 
 bereaved of her rector and of her nephew, raged and stormed at 
 the course which events had taken. It wasn't liuthyu Pendra- 
 gon's fault if Ernest Goldthorpe chose to take him. He wanted a 
 curacy, and Ernest wanted a curate : what was more natural ? 
 Why should Mrs. Gryphon charge him with the blackest ingra- 
 titude, and accuse him of being a traitor and an intriguer ? He 
 had not solicited the appointment. It had fallen in his way, and 
 he had taken it. The widow would have liked to say all kinds of 
 possible tilings against the new curate ; but there was nothing to 
 be said against him. He was stanchly recommended by college 
 magnates. He was eminently learned. His poverty was noto- 
 rious ; but his moral character was without stain. Ernest 
 Goldthorpe was glad to be able to do a service to so able and 
 respectable a young man. So the Gryphon was finally discomfited, 
 — she had got all the rector's money though, and all the Mar- 
 rowfats and Chucklebuxes, with their lawyers to boot, failed in 
 dispossessing her thereof, — and the Eeverend Euthyn Pendragon 
 was curate to the Eector of Swordsley. 
 
 Stay, — learning, respectability, character, all granted, — there 
 might have been one little thing to be alleged against the 
 Eeverend Euthyn Pendragon. He icas a very vulgar person. 
 He had plenty of H's, and used them in the right place, but he 
 ■was desperately vulgar. He looked like a vulgar person. He 
 talked like one. He ate and drank like one. He dressed like 
 one. There was a vague but uncertain vulgarity in his face, his 
 smile, his demeanour. His bold, firm, defined handwriting was 
 vulgar to every cross of a t, to every dot of an i. "When he first 
 entered the presence of Lady Talmash, that aristocratic church- 
 woman held up her hands, and whispered to Magdalen, '' However 
 comes that bore by the name of Pendragon ? " 
 
 By lineage Euthyn was a gentleman of the most ancient 
 descent. What were Normans, Saxons, Danes, to his old stock ? 
 He sprang from the genuine Phoenician souclie, as I suppose all 
 the Tre, Pols, and Pens of Cornwall do. Euthyn came from that 
 famous although somewhat remote province. Unhappily there
 
 122 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 were no tin-iuines in his family, nor, had Pendragon died, would 
 there have been twenty thousand or ten under-ground in Cornwall 
 anxious to know the reason wliy. He had no money. He was 
 an orphan, and alone in the world. 
 
 An old grandmother at St. Mawes had brought this vulgar per- 
 soji up. She did what she could for him, and her small savings 
 were laid out for his benefit. Euthyn's father was a gentleman, 
 who, about the year 1825, in company with other adventurous Cor- 
 nishmen, had gone in quest of some silver-mines in Peru, and found 
 the vomito nero instead, of which, at Lima, he straightway died. 
 The old grandmother did what she could for the orphan, which was 
 not much. The father had, on the principle of conveying coals to 
 Newcastle, taken most of the available ready money of the family 
 with him to the silver-mines of Peru. In after years Euthyn 
 Pendragon did not mind confessing that in his boyhood he had 
 made a voyage in a fishing-smack, with a view to see whether he 
 would like to be apprenticed to the sea ; and that he had served a 
 short probation behind the shop-counter of a chemist, who like- 
 wise sold grocery and haberdashery, at Truro. These early asso- 
 ciations may have been instrumental in planting the first seeds of 
 that vulgarity for which Euthyn Pendragon was always noted, and 
 for which he eventually became famous. In process of time a 
 Cornish gentleman of means, who had known the paternal Pen- 
 dragon, advised Euthyn's grandmother to send him to a certain 
 ancient and well-known grammar-school in the AV^est Country. 
 He made great progress in his studies here, and was commended 
 by his master as a very diligent and capable boy, while he was 
 excepted to by his schoolfellows as being a pitiably vulgar one. 
 He obtained an exhibition at last, and took that, and his vul- 
 garity, and a huge stock (for a boy) of book-learning, and a vast 
 fund of natural shrewdness, observation, and humour, with him to 
 college. Anything else ? well, he had a slender wardrobe, and 
 his grandmother's blessing. His successes at the university were 
 solid, if not brilUant. It is said of him, that leaving school, and 
 entering the mail-coach which was to convey him to town, Euthyn 
 Pendragon flung his hat into the air, and cried, " Here goes for 
 Archbishop of Canterbury ;" but at the university it was speedily 
 decided that such a vulgar fellow would never obtain a fellowship
 
 AN EXCEEDINGLY VULGAR PERSON. 123 
 
 while doubts were expressed as to wlietlier any gentlemanly 
 bishop could ever be persuaded to ordain such a lout. He was 
 not likely to go wrong at the university. His health was of the 
 rudest, his frame of the strongest ; and excesses of dissipation 
 would have hurt him no more than excess of study ; but he was 
 wise, and chose the latter. He read desperately and continuously. 
 All that the gay youth of the university could say against him 
 was that he was vulgar. They could not in their charmingly con- 
 temptuous manner call him a " cad." There was no denying 
 his gentle blood. There was no finding a blot on his scutcheon. 
 His great-great-grandfather was duly enshrined in Fuller's 
 Worthies ; a great-grand-uncle was mentioned in Anthony a 
 Wood. Tlae university tradesmen refrained from soliciting his 
 custom ; they knew that he could do them no good, and that they 
 could do him no harm. Of what use were well-cut coats and 
 brilliant scarves to one who, winter and summer, wore a plain 
 black coat, which he acknowledged to have bought second-hand, 
 and which he himself mended when it required repair ; and 
 beneath that a waistcoat and trousers of coarse grey serge, made 
 by his old grandmother at St. Mawes ? "Where he first purchased 
 his cap and gown was a mystery ; the triflers declared that he had 
 bought them at a London masquerade warehouse, on his way to 
 college. They were certainly curiosities of faded shabbiness. 
 His linen was dreadfully coarse, but scrupulously clean. He was 
 in the habit of biting his nails to the quick, and no scissors were 
 needed for his laroje healthv-lookinsr hands. His hair was na- 
 turally dark and glossy, and he wanted no Macassar. He looked 
 like a man who washed with yellow soap. He never had a row 
 with the bargemen on the river. They respected and feared him, 
 not alone for his strength, which was palpably prodigious, but for 
 his homely, kindly manners ; for he was not above holding the 
 poorest and roughest in discourse, and would talk to them by the 
 half-hour together of common things and their daily avocations. 
 He was not vulgar to them. Some called him a " true gentle- 
 man," but more frequently working-men exclaimed : " We likes 
 him, for he talks like one of us." Clearly a very vulgar person, 
 this Euthvn Pendragon. 
 
 There were vouug gentlemen of his college whose quar-
 
 1.24 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 terly cigar bills came to ten, nay, twenty, pounds. Viscount 
 Eacquetborough, indeed, owed, his tobacconist two hundred and 
 odd ; but, then, most of that was discount. Euthyn rarely smoked, 
 but he casually mentioned that the use of a short pipe had been 
 habitual to him before he was twelve years of age ; and when 
 from time to time some new man who thought him an original 
 persuaded him to come to his rooms, he indulged in a calumet of 
 that very strongest cavendish which young undergraduates buy, 
 like Editions of the Fathers, more for show than use. Such 
 strong meat is not fit for babes. He was by rule a water- 
 drinker ; but sometimes after rowing he would drink of the 
 country beer that labourers drank. Somebody mentioned All- 
 sopp's bitter ale to him, and he returned for answer, "What 
 is that ? " The Dons could not like him ; he was too vulgar, and 
 yet he was not offensive. He was innocent of any sins against 
 collegiate discipline ; but he neither invited nor seemed thankful 
 for praise. The Dons were of course absolved from toadying him, 
 and he seemed to be utterly ignorant of the fact that anything 
 was to be got from toadying the Dons. He was a great eater, 
 although occasionally it was known that he passed the twenty- 
 four hours without any sustenance more solid than bread and 
 butter ; yet those who watched him — and he was strange enough 
 to have many observers — remarked that he could eat voraciously 
 of cold meat, of suet pudding, and of buttered toast. He was not 
 taciturn, for he was always ready to speak when spoken to ; but 
 he seldom volunteered conversation. Those who most objected 
 to his vulgarity could not help admiring his honest discourse, full 
 of manly and sensible reflection. He was one in whose presence 
 young men were somehow ashamed to swear, to talk of loose and 
 shameful things, or, indeed, to talk nonsense, if they could avoid 
 it. The most brilliant conversationalists were on their mettle in 
 the presence of Euthyn Pendragon. And yet he could enjoy 
 humour, and at a droll story, proper for a decorous man to hear, 
 would open his large mouth and laugh sonorously. The only 
 overt act against the usages of society which he had been known 
 to commit was this. He had gone to a man's rooms to return 
 some books he had borrowed — he was not above borrowing books. 
 A dozen young fellows were present, and as Euthyn Pendragoa
 
 AN EXCEEDINGLY VULGAR PERSON. 125 
 
 turned to depart, he saw a pack of cards whicli had been inadver- 
 tently left exposed on a table. Without any more ado he seized 
 the cards, flung them into the fire, put his back before it, folded 
 his arms, and said, " I am no censor of manners, Proctor, or 
 Puritan, and you may think that this is no business of mine. 
 But it is. Cards are the Devil's books. Wherever I find them, 
 I burn them. Good morning. If anybody thinks he has a right 
 to complain, I will fight him, here or elsewhere." But nobody 
 cared to complain, or to fight Euthyn Pendragon ; so he went, 
 and, indeed, the sound that accompanied his departure much more 
 resembled a cheer than a murmur of discontent. The story was 
 told about and gained him much esteem, although men were 
 careful not to invite this rigid hater of graven images to their 
 card-parties. It was known that he Avas not a hypocrite, and 
 would not lie. Lord Eacquetborough expressed himself much 
 pleased when he heard of the story, " By Jove," he said, " the 
 Grisly Bear is a trump. I wish I could lend him fifty pounds. 
 He looks so deuced hard up. I wish my father could put a living 
 by for him." Viscount Eacquetborough's papa was tlie Earl of 
 Tenniscourt (family name De la Paume), very noble, but impo- 
 verished. Viscount Eacquetborough was always wishing good 
 things to everybody, but his lordship's habits were expensive and 
 his means were limited. He ended by owing the tobacconist 
 many hundreds of pounds ; and, going through the court, retired 
 to Baden-Baden iintil such time as he should be called to the 
 House of Lords to legislate for vulgar people. 
 
 In the second year of Euthyn's residence the old grandmother 
 at St. Mawes died. The few pounds that were left of her savings 
 barely sufficed to bury her, and to pay the expenses of her grand- 
 son to Cornwall and back. He had no kindred now, no money, 
 and no friends. The country gentleman who had advised his 
 being sent to the grammar-school was dead. He was known at 
 the university, and might have earned some money by reading 
 with men ; but he preferred to leave college for a while. He 
 went away, and found a situation as usher in a school near London. 
 The master was an ignorant brute, who had been bankrupt in the 
 liuen-drapeiy line, and who, when his certificate was definitely 
 refused, had hesitated whether he should turn corn-cutter, low
 
 126 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 comedian, or school-master. He liad an aptitude for the two 
 former vocations ; for the latter his capacity was limited to the 
 possession of a very strong arm and a cruel disposition. Broom- 
 back, of Clapham Eise (he is Dr. Broomhack now, a German 
 degree), was glad to secure the services of a good classical scholar, 
 and a university man to boot, for forty pounds a year. So Euthyn 
 Pendragon taught the boys, and Broomback beat them, and his wife 
 took tithe and toll on their clothes and linen ; and thus the division 
 of scholastic labour was complete. The boys used to laugh at the 
 usher's odd, rough ways, as he read Greek Testament to them, 
 vvitli a great hole under the arm of his black coat ; but he was 
 kiud and just, and I think that before he went away nine out of 
 ten of those children loved the poor usher. By great good luck 
 there was a boy at Broomback's who was the son of a lady of some 
 fortune. It having occurred to Broomback to beat this lad (who 
 was frail and delicate) into a fever, he v^as removed from Clapham 
 Eise ; and when he got well, he begged so earnestly that his 
 studies might be directed by his dear old usher, — so he called 
 Euthyn, — that his mamma forthwith engaged the friendless 
 Cornishman as domestic tutor to her darling. In time Pendragon 
 saved enough money to take a small house of his own, and adver- 
 tise for pupils ; and one of those pupils was the Eipton Gryphon 
 you have heard of. I don't know what Euthyn Pendragon thought 
 of the preposterous plan of turning a scamp into a clergyman, 
 indulged in by the vain and self-willed housekeeper of the Eeve- 
 rend Mr. Marrowfat ; but he did his duty by the prodigal, even 
 to the extent of having one or two up and down fights with him. 
 In these combats it must be admitted that Eip, although for his 
 youth a somewhat experienced bruiser, invariably got the worst of 
 it. He was the last pupil that Euthyn Pendragon took. He 
 was rich enough to go back to the university and take his degree. 
 He was ordained on the strength of a miserable cure offered him 
 by the proprietor of a large bone-boiling manufactory ia the Essex 
 ruarshes, who had a chapel on his premises for the benefit of his 
 work-people, and thought it rather a grand thing to entertain a 
 chaplain at his own expense. The young curate— he was now 
 five-and-twenty years of age — did not stay long in Essex. The 
 people were willing enough to receive religious instruction ; but
 
 AX EXCEEDINGLY VULGAll PERSON. 127 
 
 when they were not at work they straggled away to the adjacent 
 beer-shops and got tipsy, and on Sundays they generally had the 
 ague ; and finally the bone-boiler breaking, it was discovered that 
 he had been robbing everybody for the last fifteen years (lie was 
 the man who did eighty-seven thousand pounds worth of bills in 
 one morning, assuring the firm who discounted them that every 
 bill " had bones at the bottom of it," but it turned out rather that 
 every bill was fundamentally fraudulent) ; and Euthyn Pendragon 
 lost his chaplaincy. He was for a while unemployed ; but, on the 
 recommendation of a college-acquaintance, he became known to 
 the Eeverend Ernest Goldthorpe, whose views on Church matters, 
 in the latter part of 1849, had not become so strongly pronounced, 
 and who was happy to have a person so fitted by education and 
 principles for the responsible position confided to him, and who, 
 by family descent at least, was undeniably a gentleman. 
 
 Such was the curate of Swordsley, who had not been six months 
 in the village before he was idolised by the inhabitants, and who, 
 when Ernest began to lean towards High-Church doctrines, be- 
 came, by tacit consent, and without the slightest manifestation of 
 open opposition on his part, the leader of the Low-Church party. 
 "Ah, if he was only our rector! " cried the men of Swordsley. 
 The women, too, were unanimous in his praise, — all save the 
 haughty maiden at The Casements, Miss Magdalen Hdl. 
 
 This young lady took no pains to disguise her disdain and 
 aversion for the curate. He was from the very first eminently 
 distasteful to her. She shuddered at the contrast between the 
 pale, thoughtful, refined Ernest, with his high white brow, his 
 crisply curled chestnut locks, — he was a delicate copy of his 
 brother Hugh, — his tiny hands and feet, his neat and well-fitting 
 garments, and this brawny, swarthy, hirsute, round-shouldered, 
 bull-necked, large-limbed, Euthyn Pendragon. The man's head 
 was capacious enough, but his black hair grew thick and tufted 
 down to within a couple of inches of his bushy eyebrows. Had 
 he let Nature have her way, he would have been bearded like a 
 pioneer. His hands were uncouthly shaped, and corrugated with 
 knotty veins. Although he had the arms and the torso of a 
 Hercules, he was short and clumsy in stature, and his legs were 
 slightly bowed. She raged within herself to think that this
 
 128 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMJION. 
 
 ragged, vulgar, truncated colossus, who blew bis nose witb a 
 trumpet-sound, who trampled rather than walked over the flowers 
 of a carpet, who clattered his tea-cup and ate his food ravenousl)^ 
 who dragged books from shelves, and if he took notice of a lap-dog 
 only forced open its mouth to look at his teeth, who never wore 
 gloves, — should be a gentleman of long descent; whereas Ernest, 
 with all his refinement and his address, and the title that was in 
 store for him, was but the son of a city money-spinner of mush- 
 room extraction. Why should this vulgar person, she thought, 
 be a gentleman? "What right had he to a proud name, — he who 
 looked like some Cornish miner fresh from wielding the pick ? 
 She did not soften in the least when she heard how good and kind 
 and thoughtful he was to the poor. Had she no goodness, no 
 kindness, and no thought ? AVas Ernest destitute of these good 
 qualities ? She bit her lip in anger when she beard that this 
 rough, awkward man, who could not speak Erench, who had 
 plainly said that people should come to church to pray, and not to 
 look at pictures, and that the best mural decoration for the chancel 
 was a fresh coat of whitewash ; who lodged at Pearkleborough's 
 the grocer's, and bought his own chop or steak at the butcber's 
 (who could scarcely bring himself to charge the curate anything 
 for it) — should be revered and beloved by the parisliioners, who 
 looked on Ernest with a dislike that was little short of hatred. 
 She heard that this man, who could scarcely handle a knife and 
 fork, and was not fit to be trusted with a teacup, could bandage 
 wounds, could bleed a horse, or put leeches on a cliild's temples ; 
 could dandle babies, could make out petty tradesmen's bills, could 
 appease lovers' quarrels, and prevent contentious neighbours from 
 going to law ; and that he did all this without currying favour 
 with the poor (who are as easily and as often toadied as the rich), 
 but always witb a homely, sensible, simple-mindedness. Magdalen 
 knew that the curate disapproved of the rector's views. She dis- 
 liked him for that. She disliked him for his popularity. She 
 disliked him for his very goodness. She did. And yet she was 
 a virtuous, pious, and — so far as her purse went — a charitable 
 young woman. How much more reason had she to dislike Kuthyn 
 Pendragon, when, as he bad tlie ineffable presumption to do, he 
 told her that he loved her ?
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 IN- WHICH THE CTJEA.TE GOES TO LONDON. 
 
 "He did," Magdalen exclaimed indignantly, — almost passion- 
 ately for one. of her composed manner. " He told me so in this 
 very room." 
 
 " And what if he did, Maggy ? " was the reply of the person to 
 whom Miss Hill addressed herself. " Did you expect him to tell 
 you so in the church-porch, or in front of the village-inn ? If you 
 have curates here, you must expect them to make love to you. Ifc 
 stands to reason.'' 
 
 This conversation took place one May morning in the antique 
 drawing-room of The Casements. Magdalen Hill was sitting at 
 her perpetual hard labour of illuminating select martyrologies on 
 vellum ; and her sole companion was a lady of about her own age, 
 who, in certainly an easy if not elegant posture, reclined in a large 
 arm-chair just opposite to Miss Hill's working-table, and contem- 
 plated, with that complacent interest which only habitual laziness 
 can give, the delicate and minute pursuit in which the other was 
 engaged. 
 
 The lady was young — a year in advance of Magdalen perhaps, and 
 although not beautiful, comely to look upon. She had more than 
 what is termed " a tendency to emhonpoint,^^ for she was decidedly 
 plump, tottering on the verge of corpulence, so to speak. Xow of 
 fat girls there are several varieties. There is your fat baby-girl, a 
 delightful little dumpling of a child, every one of whose dimples is 
 a mine of delight, and every one of the creases in whose rosy limbs 
 inspires you with an irresistible propensity to tickle it. These 
 are the little baby-children that Eubens painted so gloriously. 
 He made their httle puffed-out cheeks celestially roseate; he 
 curled their flaxen locks like unto the young tendrils of the vine ; 
 he tipped their little heels and elbows with rich carnations ; he
 
 130 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 took away their sex, and made them epicene ; and when he had 
 added little wings of green and golden plumage to their shoulders, 
 they were no longer baby-children, but angels, ministering in the 
 apotheoses of kings and emperors, who, I sincerely trust, have 
 reached the destination which the courtly pencil of Peter Paul 
 ascribed to their dead majesties. Then there is your fat school- 
 girl, with long, fair ringlets, profuse as aLouis-Quatorze perruque, 
 with fixed blue eyes that remind you unpleasantly of the Pantheon 
 Bazaar and Madame Montanari's wax-work shop, and with a dull, 
 listless fixity of demeanour that makes one always wish to find 
 out whereabouts the string is, in order to pull it, and cause the 
 eyes to move and the great doll to squeak " pa-pa " and " ma-ma." 
 Yet another variety of the fat school-girl is there in the romp, or 
 " tom-boy," who has cheeks as ruddy and as hard as a Eibstone 
 pippin ; who is continually grazing the skin off her arms, and 
 tearing the trimming off the ends of her trousers ; who, if she 
 lives in the country, is in the habit of catching young colts, and 
 riding them without saddle or bridle round paddocks ; who is 
 always getting into domestic trouble through her transactions 
 with a big black dog fond of the water and of chivying cats ; who 
 is always laughing, has a tremendous appetite, and once fought 
 with a Boy and came off victorious. The decline of the old- 
 fashioned system of education, and the rise of seminaries and 
 collegiate institutions, where young ladies attend lectures on the 
 Od force and the Therapeutic Cosmogony of Ancient Art, has made 
 the tom-boy fat girl an exceedingly rare specimen of femininity ; 
 but she is still occasionally to be met with — notably in Westmore. 
 land boarding-schools, and in farm-houses of the West. I lament 
 the progressive extinction of the merry fat girl. She usually 
 grew up to be a jolly, comfortable matron, with a tribe of sunny 
 children, all as great romps as she had been. Her pickled wal- 
 nuts were perfection. She was one of those admirable women 
 who always give you something to eat when you call upon them, 
 and if you are neither hungered nor athirst, insist on your carry- 
 ing away a pot of preserves or a slice of bride-cake with you. It 
 was in the golden age, and England was merry England indeed, 
 when those fat matrons who had been fat girls flourished. They 
 used to entertain you at " meat teas " — bounteous repasts, where
 
 IX WHICH THE CUB ATE GOES TO LONDON. 131 
 
 there were sausages and pressed beef, soused mackerel, and 
 potato-cakes. 
 
 The fat young lady need not have been a fat child. Some are 
 of the lean kind in early girlhood, and fall into fatness as others 
 fall into love. The Germans are the most prolilic in fat young 
 ladies. Their names are Ermeugarde, Hilda, Dorothea. Their 
 eyes are blue, but not doll-like, for tliey are full of sentiment. 
 They call each other "D?;," and continuously embroider cigar- 
 cases, tobacco-pouches, nay, carpet-bags even, for officers in the 
 Grand-Duke's army, or students of the university of Katzelstein. 
 They sit and sigh, and carve Ludolf or Heinrich's names on the 
 bark of liuden-trees. They write pretty little sonnets to the sky 
 and the birds in fat albums bound in blue watered silk. They 
 make little sketches in coloured crayons, representing Korner 
 going to the wars, the Fahnenwacht keeping his lonely watch, 
 and not daring to name the lady of his love. They wish they 
 were not quite so fat ; but they are above drinking vinegar to 
 make themselves thin. Perhaps they eat a little too much. 
 They, too, marry, and have prodigious families ; but they don't 
 become jolly. They go through life with a meek smile of placid 
 resignation, eating plentifully, and reading many novels. " Elle a 
 peaucoup zouffert, Matame la Paronne, tans le temps," tawny- 
 moustached Captain Kalbsfleich whispers to you at the tahle- 
 cVMte. Tou look at " Matame la Paronne," and see that she 
 has got very well through two courses, and is making a vigorous 
 onslaught on the third, — let us say of stewed trout and maca- 
 roons, hot roast-veal and raspberry-jam, or some equally anomalous 
 German dish, — and find it difficult to persuade youi'self that the 
 Baroness has ever suffered from anything more serious than 
 indigestion. 
 
 The lady who sat in. th& great arm-chair opposite Magdalen 
 Hill by no means belonged to the sentimental or to the doll-like 
 category of stout young ladies. Par more probable that ten years 
 before she had belonged to the order of tom-boys ; indeed, it may 
 be as well to make a clean breast of it at once, and avow that, at 
 fourteen years of age, there had never been a franker, merrier, or 
 noisier hoyden than the Honourable Letitia Salusbury. She was 
 an only child ; that may have had something to do with it. The 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 lady her mother — a meek woman, wlio was frightened at mice, and 
 firmly believed in the Apparition of Mrs. Veal, as related by 
 Daniel Defoe — had died during her infancy, which may have had 
 mere to do with it. At all events, Letitia grew up through 
 childhood petted, caressed, and humoured in every caprice, and if 
 she was not spoiled herself, she spoiled, at least, innumerable 
 frocks, pinafores, pairs of socks, and garden-hats. To enumerate 
 the panes of glass fractured by this young lady, the lustres, china 
 monsters, rare tea-cups, irrevocably smashed ; the dolls she dis- 
 membered ; the injuries she did to marqueterie tables and costly 
 carpets ; and the immense benpfit she conferred on the bookselling 
 trade by destroying every book that came within her reach, and 
 so increasing the consumption of juvenile literature — would be a 
 task as wearisome as to learn the annual speeches on the Army 
 and ]S"avy Estimates by heart, throwing in the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer's financial statement by way of epilogue. She conde- 
 scended to learn very little, but what she did learn she learned 
 very well. She was the bane, terror, and despair of eight succes- 
 sive governesses, native and foreign ; but she took a fancy to the 
 Swordsley curate who stammered, and actually went through the 
 Latin Accidence with him. Her indulgent papa, after vainly 
 explaining to her that it was necessary for a young lady of her 
 high station to attain some proficiency in the Continental lan- 
 guages, in music, and in drawing, despatched her to a Parisian 
 pensionnat. After an enforced sojourn of three years, equally 
 irksome to parent and child, Letitia returned to Swordsley a very 
 fair French scholar. Of her drawing, it may be sufiicient to say 
 that she had a particular aptitude for sketching horses and dogs ; 
 but as to music, I am afraid that her progress had not extended 
 farther than enabled her to whistle sundry lively airs familiar to 
 the youth of Paris, and to join in the chorus of numerous con- 
 vivial melodies, of whicb the wonder was to know where she had 
 picked them up. It is certain, however, that she had publicly 
 diswigged the dancing-master at the establishment of Madame 
 Givry de la Eonciere in the Champs Elysees ; that she had 
 organised numerous hot suppers in the dormitory, the prepara- 
 tion of one of which surreptitious banquets had nearly set the 
 school on fire : and that she bad blown ud the bust of the sainted
 
 IN WHICH THE CURATE GOES TO LONDON'. 133 
 
 M. de Fenclon, Archbishop of Cambrai, which stood iu the 
 garden, Avith gunpowder. She was the delight of her school- 
 fellows ; but the diswigged dancing-master called her " une belle 
 me^ere." Madame Givrj de la Eouciere bore with her eccentri- 
 cities, for the quarterly bills sent to her papa, and so punctuall)' 
 settled by his solicitor at St. Becketsbury, were very large, and 
 made her a valuable pupil ; but after the departure of the 
 Honourable Miss Salusbury, the much-suft'ering schoolmistress 
 spoke of her privately, only as " ceite jyetite diablesse,'" and in 
 public, vrarned her flock against the example of " la conduite 
 inconcevahlement devergondee d'une demoiselle qiie la convenance 
 m^ empeche de nommer.'" 
 
 The Honourable Letitia had, as a child, always had her own 
 way ; and she was not likely to abandon it on coming to woman's 
 estate. Her papa was very old, and adored her. She returned 
 all his love with interest, but that did not hinder her from tyran- 
 nising over him iu a manner quite as good-natured as it was 
 arbitrary. She had been, at school, and with the exception of her 
 brief probation under the curate who stammered, a very close 
 imitation of a dunce ; but on her return to England she began 
 to read with much avidity. The bent of her literary studies was 
 peculiar. She had a healthy scorn for Erench romances, and 
 esteemed them all, from beginning to end, as so much vicious 
 humbug. The historians, essayists, and moralists, whose bulky 
 tomes graced the morocco-valauced shelves of her father's library, 
 she classed, generically, as "old fogies," and she kept fishhooks 
 in a very splendidly bound copy of Elegant Extracts. Wor did 
 our English three-volume novels, mainly relating to the cultiva- 
 tion of the afl:ections among the upper classes of society, please 
 her any more than the little brochures, full of paper poison, which 
 are so plentiful in Paris. " Trash," " rubbisli," and " rigmarole" 
 the Honourable Letitia Salusbury called the staple products of 
 the circulating library at St. Becketsbury. But, for the enliven- 
 ing works of Captain Marryat and the other nautical novelists, 
 and for the Ingoldsby Legends, Miss Salusbury took an immense 
 liking. She had the dreadful heresy to declare all poetry — 
 except it was " funny " — a bore ; but she luxuriated in the 
 perusal of Nimrod's Sporting Sketches. She yawned over Sir
 
 134 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Walter Scott, and intimated her opinion that Diana Yernon was 
 a designing minx, who only put on a riding-liabit to liook Trank 
 Osbaldistone ; but I mucli fear that sbe bad heard of a work 
 written by the late Mr. Pierce Egan, and called Boxiana. It 
 is terrible to tell, but the Honourable Letitia Salusbury was an 
 assiduous student of Buff's Guide to tie Turf and the Baeing 
 Calendar. Ton see that I wish to extenuate nothing of her 
 faults ; but in order that nothiug may be set down in malice con- 
 cerning her, I must, while admitting that she did shoot, fish, 
 hunt, drive, — tandem occasionally, — and bet, deny in the most 
 unqualified manner what has been averred by the malevolent, 
 viz. that the Honourable Letitia Salusbury smoked cigars and 
 drank brandy-and-water. As to her conversation, you will be 
 enabled to judge of its tenor ; and as to another accusation whicb 
 has been brought against her, of swearing, you may be sure that, 
 if Miss Salusbury did now and then rap out an ugly word, I shall 
 always, for good manners' sake, suppress it. 
 
 I say that she was not beautiful, but was still comely to look 
 upon. She had great flashing brown eyes and a quantity of 
 vagrant brown hair, which was ordinarily thrust into a net, or 
 tumbled off her forehead anyhow. She had a great deal too much 
 colour — at least, of that colour which is not sold by the per- 
 fumers, and that won't rub off. Her mouth would have been 
 handsome had it been a little smaller. Her teeth were very 
 white, but they were lai-ge and square. Her nose wavered 
 between the mild retrousse and the decided snub. Bug her 
 whole face beamed with candour, happiness, and good-nature, and 
 these amply redeemed the irregularity of her features. Her 
 fio-ure, for all its plumpness, was graceful and supple, and she was 
 as agile as a squirrel. ISTobody could precisely say that Miss 
 Salusbury was masculine, although she delighted and excelled in 
 most of the pursuits and the exercises of men. No ; she was not 
 masculine, and yet she had, it must be confessed, something of the 
 Amazon of the Cirque about her, with a moi-e considerable 
 admixture of a good-looking milkmaid. It is very improper to 
 say so. No doubt it is unpardonable to unveil a heroine who, 
 albeit she was a peer's daughter, frequently spoke of money as 
 " tin," of a carriage as a " trap," of a gentleman as a " fellow."
 
 IN WHICH THE CURATE GOES TO LONDON. 135 
 
 She could not help it, she said, when remonstrated with by 
 Magdalen. It was her way. There was no harm in it, and she 
 hated humbug. So, as it was her way, there was but one course 
 open, and that was to let her have it. 
 
 I have hinted that the papa of this young lady, who knew quite 
 as much about horses, dogs, rats, and badgers as one of her own 
 grooms, was a peer of the realm. You may take down your 
 peerage and look for Chalkstonehengist (Viscount). Jehan de 
 Salusbury did good service at Agincourt. Sir Mulciber Salus- 
 bury, of Chalkstonehengist, was summoned as a baron to Henry 
 the Eighth's first parliament. The Salusburys fought on the 
 King's side during the civil wars, and the possessor of the title 
 was made a A^iscount at the Eestoration. " Le roy^ ^(^foy, la loy" 
 was the Salusbury motto. The Lord Chalkstonehengist, regnant, 
 was a very old gentleman, born while the American War was at 
 its hottest. He was the most consistent, but the mildest and 
 most benevolent, of Tories of the old school. He spoke of the 
 [Reform Bill as " that grievous error in legislation," and of the 
 Reformers as " gentlemen who hold the pernicious doctrines of 
 Mr. Hunt and Mr. Cobbett." A bitter Tory lord held his proxy, 
 for Lord Chalkstonehengist seldom made his appearance in the 
 senate-house. He wore a blue coat and brass buttons, low- 
 crowned white hat and top-boots. He had not forgotten his 
 scholarship, and the composition of Latin verses sometimes 
 served to while away an odd hour. It was even said that he had 
 been engaged for years in writing a history of the American "War, 
 in which the Stamp Act was incontrovertibly defended, and Mr. 
 "Washington very hardly dealt by. Until years and infirmities 
 had overtaken him, he had been an enthusiast in the sports of tl#B 
 field ; and it was with an irrepressible pleasure, mingled with an 
 odd sensation that the thing wasn't exactly proper, that he heard 
 of the daring deeds of his daughter, in riding 'cross country, 
 leaping gates and clearing ditches. For Miss Salusbury was in 
 all respects a worthy descendant of the old monastic huntress, 
 Dame Juliana Berners ; and, from her own practical experience, 
 could have capped the sporting wisdom of the noble lady who 
 wrote
 
 136 THE SEVEN SOKS OF MAMMON. 
 
 ' ' "WTjeresoever ye fare by fry th or by fell 
 My dere chylde take heede how Trystram do you tell 
 How manie manere bebtys of venerie tliere were, 
 Lystea to youre dame, and she shalle you lere : 
 Four maner bestys of venerie there are, — 
 The fyrst of them the harte, the second is the hare ; 
 The boore is one of tho : the wulfe and not one more " 
 
 —only, Dame Letitia Salusbury would have taken away the 
 " boore " and the " wulfe," and added the fox. 
 
 Eather and daughter lived pleasantly and comfortably enough 
 iu their old house on the older estate of Chalkstonehengist, about 
 a mile and a quarter from The Casements. Lord Chalkstone- 
 hengist was not very rich, but had enough and to spare. His 
 high Tory predilections did not prevent him from being kind, 
 ho°spitable, and benevolent, to his neighbours, to his tenants, and 
 to the poor. As a landlord he was of the most liberal, and, 
 althou"-h he preserved bis game in moderation, never refused a 
 farmer a day's shooting. As a magistrate he was of the most 
 merciful. They used to tell a story of one Giles Conybeare, an 
 incorrigible poacher, who was brought before his lordship sitting 
 in petty sessions. It was about the twenty-fifth time that Giles 
 had so fallen into trouble for wilful contravention of the Game 
 Laws. His lordship put on his sternest expression of counte- 
 nance, which at the worst was but dove-hke. " Here again, Giles 
 Conybeare," he thundered, or at least tried to thunder. " Were 
 I your lordship, I should make an example of him," whispered the 
 clerk, " Tes," answered the noble magistrate, " an example^ 
 certainly — an example must be made of Giles Conybeare." "!For 
 liie sake of the public," whispered the clerk. " For the sake of 
 the public," his lordship repeated. The wretched Giles began to 
 blubber. He could not deny that he had been taken red-handed, 
 with one pocket full of hares, and the other full of springes ; but 
 he pleaded his grandmother bedridden with the " rheumatiz," his 
 own want of employment, his large family. For Giles was a 
 philoprogenitive poacher, and had no less than eleven children. 
 "It makes his ofience worse," murmured the clerk sotto voce, 
 " All this only aggravates your offence, prisoner," said his lord- 
 ship aloud ; and he went on to tell the captive that he ought to
 
 IN WHICH THE CURATE GOES TO LONDON'. 137 
 
 be hanged, that he ought to be transported ; that he was a dis- 
 grace to the village, to the estate, to the country, and so forth. 
 Wurzel, the steward, inclined his l^^ad towards the bench, and 
 delivered a pitiable character of Giles from behind his hand. The 
 prisoner could onlv continue to blubber, to wring his handcuffed 
 hands, and to talk about his bedridden grandmother and his 
 eleven children. 
 
 "This must be put a stop to," continued his lordship, 
 glancing with benign severity at the culprit. " I'll — no, I 
 won't. How many children did he say he had ? Eleven ! Ah, 
 dear me ! And his grandmother bedridden, too. And no work. 
 Ah! poor fellow. I — Til give Mm a pig. Wurzel, give him a 
 pig," quoth Lord Chalkstonehengist, throwing himself back in his 
 arm-chair. You may understand from this that his lordship was 
 not unlikely to be a somewhat indulgent parent. 
 
 " And what answer did you return to this lovelorn swain ? " 
 said Miss Salusbury, breaking a somewhat irksome silence which 
 had ensued. 
 
 " I told him," Magdalen replied, "that I should feel it my duty 
 to acquaint my brother — I mean Ernest — with his conduct, if he 
 presumed to repeat it." 
 
 " Well, that wasn't very encouraging ; but it's an answer that 
 may cut both ways. Appeals to one's brother may mean any- 
 thing. Don't you remember the story of the young lady in 
 Australia — I should like to go to Australia — who wrote just this 
 in a book, and left it, quite by accident of course, in the way of a 
 bashful swain, ' If he doesn't propose to-morrow, I'll get my 
 brother to thrash him ? ' " 
 
 " I must beg you, Miss Salusbury — " interrupted Magdalen, 
 looking up from her work — 
 
 " I must beg you, my dear Maggy," retorted the daughter of 
 the House of Chalkstonehengist, " to remember that there is 
 nothing, after all, so wonderful in the conduct of Mr. Pendragon. 
 He is a gentleman of good family, and although he is only a curate 
 now, why, bless us, he may be made Archbishop of Canterbury 
 some line morning." 
 
 " He had the miserable vanity to tell me as much. He vaunted
 
 138 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 liis poverty, and said that he 'A^ould hew steps out of the rock of 
 knowledge, whereby to mount to fame and fortune." 
 
 " I think I've heard that before," Miss Salusbury remarked with 
 semi-gravity. " It sounds like poetry. I hope it isn't ; for I hate 
 poetry, except when it's jolly ; and I should be sorry if Pendragon 
 turned out a humbug. Did you ever hear the ' Eatcatcher's 
 Daughter,' Maggy ? I made Willy Goldthorpe sing it to me the 
 last time he came over from St. Becketsbury." 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that Lord Chalkstonehengist's 
 daughter was an immense favourite with young men, both of 
 sporting tendency and the military profession, who voted Lady 
 Talmash a dragon, and Magdalen Hill a snowball. She was 
 declared to be a stunner, a screamer, an out-and-outer, — all 
 kinds of superlatives of admiration were applied to her. She was 
 perfectly frank and unrestrained with the young men. They 
 would have liked to elect her an honorary member of the cavalry 
 mess at St. Becketsbury. At the cover-side her gray riding-habit, 
 and the red feather in her cap, were as well known as Lord Chalk- 
 stonehengist's white pony, — he could not follow the hounds now, 
 but liked to see the meet and chat with his neighbours, — or as 
 Farmer Turmut's big brown horse with the star on his forehead. 
 She tolerated smoking after permission had been asked ; but woe 
 betide the luckless wight who lit his cigar without leave being 
 granted, or who by word or deed took a liberty with the Honour- 
 able Letitia Salusbury ! An unhappy cornet, raw to the service, 
 was once rash enough to chaff her, whereupon the daughter of 
 Chalkstoneheugist pulled his ears till they were as crimson as his 
 sash, flung his undress cap out of window, and bade him follow 
 it, or she would make him, she added significantly. You could 
 not take a liberty with her, although she did know the "Eat- 
 catcher's Daughter," and had besides an astounding repertoire of 
 ballads and melodies more popular than refined. The Onzeport 
 hounds met near St. Becketsbury, and Letitia rode regularly to 
 them. There had come down a certain celebrated sportswoman — 
 who but the famous Miss Southbank indeed! — who sometimes 
 hunted other animals besides hares and foxes. She thought it 
 would be capital fun to engage the eccentric daughter of Lord 
 Chalkstoneheugist in conversation. Up rode the dashing South-
 
 IN WHICH THE CURATE GOES TO LONDON. 139 
 
 bank, splendid in a scarlet riding-babit, spatter-dasbed "witli patent 
 leatber, Avith tbe big diamond borsesboe given to ber by Lord 
 Eaequetborougb, just previous to bis insolvency, at ber tbroat, 
 and tbe riding-wbip witb tbe emerald bandle presented to ber by 
 that vrell-known sporting blade, Charley Pettycasb, who kept so 
 many race-horses, theatres, and dancers, who spent so many 
 thousands a year, and who, when he was transported for life for 
 his innumerable forgeries, turned out to have been all along a 
 clerk in a bank with 1501. a year salary. Up rode the Soutbbank, 
 saucy and radiant, on ber noted black mare " Shiny Eace." I 
 wonder the horse bad not a jewelled surcingle. His mistress was 
 always covered with spleJidour, and jewels, and shame ; and every 
 one of ber gewgaws bad some history of sin or of folly connected 
 with it. The Soutbbank presumed to " pass the time of day " to 
 Miss Salusbury, and to ask her whether she meant to put tbe pot 
 on for the Metropolitan ? Letitia started back so as nearly to 
 throw her steed on liis haunches, and, trembling with passion, 
 made this reply, " Tou are an abandoned hussy. I know all about 
 you ; and if you dare to speak to me again, I'll cut your wicked 
 face in two with my whip." Tbe Soutbbank was not very remark- 
 able for placidity of temper, biit she was somehow cowed as much 
 by Miss Salusbury's manner as by tbe matter of ber answer. She 
 rode away quite crest-fallen, and at the Onzeport bounds was seen 
 no more. She alluded subsequently to Letitia as an "uppish 
 part}^," but without bitterness. Tbe Soutbbank was sensible. Of 
 course the blame of having incited her to address Letitia was laid 
 at the door of Puffin, tbe wretched cornet, who had bad his ears 
 pulled. She vainly denied the charge ; but it did not much 
 matter. Some months afterwards that well - remembered and 
 eccentric captain of dragoons. Lord Snowstorm, having i-endered 
 Puffin's life a burden to him by cutting up hair-brushes in bis 
 bed, filling his boots with coal-tar, charging his cigars with 
 moistened gunpowder, corking his face, and shaving off one of his 
 whiskers, the cornet's mamma indignantly interfered, and caused 
 her darling to sell his commission, and quit tbe wicked, depraved 
 service, just after Lord Snowstorm bad been turned out of it by 
 the Commander-in-Chief 
 
 Letitia and Magdalen were very good friends ; but the intimacy
 
 140 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMilON. 
 
 was one-sided. "William the dragoon was a favourite witli the 
 Amazon, and she extended her fondness to Miss Hill; drove over 
 tv\o or three times to see her, invited her to Chalkstonehengist 
 much oftener than Miss Hill chose to come, and persisted in calling 
 her Maggy. But the haughty illuminator never went beyond 
 "Miss Salusbury " in addressing her. 
 
 The subject of the curate was anything but an agreeable one ; 
 but Letitia, for some capricious reason of her own, continued to 
 press it. 
 
 " Well," she went on. " He did repeat his ' conduct,' as you 
 call it, didn't he ? " 
 
 "He wrote," Magdalen replied, with cold severity. 
 
 " And you—" 
 
 " Eeturned his letter. More than that, I felt it my duty to 
 carry out my threat. I made my brother — I made Ernest 
 acquainted with the affair." 
 
 " In other words, you tried to get this poor curate the sack,'^ 
 tlie unaffected Letitia remarked. " That wasn't very kind-hearted 
 of you, Maggy. And what did the reverend say ? " 
 
 " He agreed with me that I was not to be insulted with 
 impunity." 
 
 " Insulted ! where's the insult ? " 
 
 " Miss Salusbury ! " Magdalen exclaimed in proud surprise, and 
 with a positive blush on her pale face. 
 
 " Miss Hill ! " the other rejoined, mimicking her. " Dear 
 Maggy," she continued, "you are a good girl, after all, although 
 you are as proud as a dog with two tails," — whence the Honour- 
 able Miss Salusbury gathered her prolific collection of similes was 
 always a matter of intense surprise. " "What great offence has 
 Pendragon committed ? You are both young. He is a clergy- 
 man and a gentleman. Ton are a lady. Surely you can strike a 
 balance between High Church and Low Church. You can't go 
 on for ever moping here, and grizzling about that poor dear Hugh 
 Goldthorpe." 
 
 " You forget my position," Magdalen said, in a sad low 
 voice. 
 
 " Well, I do perhaps. I forgot that you had a fortune. But 
 what does that matter? Is Pendragon the first man who has
 
 IN WHICH THE CURATE GOES TO LONDON. 141 
 
 ■wanted to marry a rich woman ? Don't you remember the old 
 lines ? 
 
 " 'Cloth of frize, be not too bold 
 
 If thou art match'd with cloth of gold : 
 Cloth of gold, do not despise 
 
 If thou art match'd with cloth of frize.' 
 
 Besides," she added, "I don't think that Bruin is mercenary after 
 all." 
 
 "Wo, indeed," quoth Magdalen, half to herself. 
 
 " Then why not have him. Better to be a curate's wife than a 
 lonely spinster, painting away at those everlasting saints and 
 martyrs with their heads on one side, and worrying yourself about 
 High Church and Low Church and Ernest Goldthorpe, who would 
 be a good fellow enough if he didn't wear swanshot in his shoes, 
 and live on pickled eggs and boiled soda-water." 
 
 Again, and at the mention of the rector's name, Magdalen 
 blushed. " I declare," continued Miss Salusbury, " that if Bruin 
 asked me, I'd marry him myself, and beg papa to get him made 
 something better than a curate ; though for the matter of that, I 
 think Pendragon would do best in the Life Guards. I'm getting 
 tired of the life I lead. It's very jolly, but it's lonely, I don't 
 seem to know where I'm going. I suppose nobody does. Some- 
 times, when I'm reading BelVs Life, I seem to fancy that I should 
 like to be a man. They have a good many advantages over us, 
 those men. Why can't I play at nurr and spell, and walk a 
 thousand miles in a thousand hours ? "Why can't I match my 
 novice to fight any man in England, bar the ' Mumper' — who is 
 the Mumper ? — at catch-weight for a hundred pounds a side ? 
 "Why can't I show toy-dogs ? or patronise the noble sport of 
 ratting ? or frequent the Bendigo's Head, where Boxiana is kept 
 at the bar, and gloves are always ready for the convenience of 
 gentlemen ? "Why can't I go to the festive board, where harmony 
 prevails, and the eccentric Joey Jones is in the chair ? "Who is 
 Joey Jones, and why is he eccentric, and called Joey ? and is he a 
 broker's man, that he is always taking the chair ? I should like 
 to be a man. No; I should hke to be a Bloomer, or Dr, Elizabeth 
 Johnson, or Madame Ida PfeifFer, and travel the whole world 
 over ; or Eichard Carr, the female sailor. What a brick Grace
 
 143 THE SEVEN SONS OP ^lAMMON. 
 
 Darling was ? I wonder whether Joan of Arc's armour hurt lien 
 I tried on one of the old helmets in our hall the other day, and 
 had a frightful headache for hours afterwards. Perhaps the best 
 thing to do would be to marry somebody." 
 
 " I think so too," responded Magdalen, glancing with solemn 
 pity at this misguided young woman. 
 
 " The difficulty is to find somebody. The daughter and heiress 
 of Lord Chalkstonehengist can't go to the barracks at St. Beckets- 
 bury, and say, Messieurs of the dragoons, or gentlemen of the 
 Onzeport hunt, will you marry me? I can't pickle and I can't 
 preserve. I can't play and I can't sing, but I can leap a five- 
 barred gate, make the best flies in Kent, and shoot a trout in the 
 water. Heigh o ! " 
 
 " Truly, the daughter of Lord Chalkstonehengist could not do 
 this ; but might she not find pursuits more in keeping with her 
 rank in life, and to that which society expects from her ? " 
 
 "Society is all humbug," cried the Honourable Miss Salusbury, 
 in something like a passion ; " and I've tried all the pursuits in 
 keeping with my rank in life, and they're all botheration," 
 
 "There remains marriage as a resource open to you; and surely^ 
 if the gentleman in whom you take so great an interest — " 
 
 "Pickles!" exclaimed the Honourable Miss Salusbury. Her 
 expletives were positively unprecedented in lack of refinement. 
 " My honest persuasion is, that if I let Pendragon know that I 
 liked him, he would calmly tell me that he didn't want to have 
 anything to say to me. I know the man. Besides, I was but 
 jesting about him. He is and can be nothing to me. You know 
 that he is over head and ears in love with you, Maggy ; and cold 
 and angry with him as you seem, I can't help fancying — " 
 
 " It is too late," said Magdalen, poising her brush, and resolutely 
 driving a spike into the bosom of a martyr on the vellum before 
 her. "Ernest knows all. He was justly shocked and indignant. 
 He summoned Mr. Pendragon before him. High words passed 
 between them only yesterday ; and I believe that Mr. Pendragon 
 will shortly leave this part of the country." 
 
 "Then, I'm very sorry for it; and the fat's all in the fire,'* 
 Miss Salusbury remarked, and rising in dudgeon. " I shall go 
 home to lunch ; will you come ? I've got the trap and the two
 
 IN WHICH THE CUEATE GOES TO LONDON. 143 
 
 piebalds on the lawn. St. Gengulplius the Great can wait a couple 
 of hours for his eyebrows," she concluded, glancing in great dis- 
 dain at the spiked martyr, 
 
 Mao-daleu sadly shook her head, and declined the offer. 
 
 " Then I'm off. Good-bye, Maggy. "Why don'fc you turn nun, 
 or Sister of Charity, or something of that sort ? You might be a 
 martvr then yourself, without the trouble of painting whole armies 
 of them on parchment. Bye, bye." 
 
 "A nun or a Sister of Charity," repeated Magdalen, when, 
 havino' coldly returned the good-natured shake of the hand which 
 her easily-pacified friend had proffered her, the door had closed 
 upon the Honourable Miss Salusbury. " A nun or a Sister of 
 Charity! why not, indeed?" And she went on very carefully 
 and deliberately marking in the eyebrows of St. Gengulphus the 
 Great. 
 
 " Poor Pendragon !" 
 
 "Who said "poor Pendragon?" Letitia Salusbury or IMag- 
 dalen Hill ? Tou see the words are between inverted commas, so 
 the exclamation can't be mine. 
 
 The Amazon's "trap," a pretty little phaeton, with two prettier 
 piebald ponies, and a diminutive groom in gray-and-black livery, 
 and perhaps the tiniest buckskins and top-boots ever seen since 
 the visit of General Tom Thumb to this country, awaited their 
 mistress on the lawn before The Casements. Letitia was very 
 anxious before she took the reins, and settled herself on the high 
 cushion of the vehicle, to know if Twitters had had his beer. 
 Twitters was the Lilliputian groom ; and he, smacking his lips, 
 made answer that he had had a pint of the right sort, but that it 
 might have been a trifle older. Miss Salusbury delighted in this 
 Twitters. He was so charmingly wicked, she said. He was, 
 indeed, a most precocious imp. He betted; his talk was essentially 
 "horsy;" he was the proprietor of a terrier which could be 
 backed to kill a maximum of rats in a minimum of minutes, and 
 which had been favourably noticed in the sporting journals ; and 
 when his mistress was at a loss for a line in the "Ratcatcher's 
 Daughter," she would turn round to Twitters and seek his infal- 
 lible aid. 
 
 Chalk stonehengist was towards St. Becketsbury, and thither the
 
 144 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Amazon drove at a smart trot. Just wliere another road turns off 
 in the direction of Tiburnhurst is a blackened and jagged stump 
 of timber; and here, according to the legend, once stood the gibbet 
 "where, a hundred and fifty years ago, had swung in a grisly 
 apparatus of chains the corpse of an atrocious murderer. By this 
 spot of ill omen there stood a short, broad-shouldered man with 
 his arms folded. He raised his hat, and, with a grim bow, would 
 have turned down the Tiburnhurst road, but for the adjuration of 
 "Hillo there 1 " by which Miss Salusbury commanded him to stop. 
 
 "Why, it's Pendragon," she cried. " Come over to the house 
 and have some lunch. Don't stand staring there, man, like a 
 stuck pig. Get in." 
 
 'No other young lady in the neighbourhood would have dared to 
 ask a clergyman to enter the phaeton which she was driving ; and 
 had any dared to do so the pendulum of scandal would have so 
 incessantly Avagged between Swordsley and St. Becketsbury, that 
 one might have thought the perpetual motion had been discovered. 
 But Miss Salusbury frankly owned that she did not care one brass 
 farthing for p\iblic opinion, and that she would do what she liked 
 when she liked. There was perhaps some consideration due to 
 what might be said concerning the curate's acceptance of the pro- 
 position ; but ladies who do as they like are not much in the habit 
 of considering the interests of other people. At any other time, 
 Huthyn Pendragon would have felt bound to decline the invita- 
 tion. As it was, perhaps for sundry good reasons of his own, he 
 chose to accept it now, and took his seat beside Miss Salusbury. 
 As he said never a word, that young lady chose to inform him that 
 he was as "grumpy" as ever. Then she adjured the piebalds to 
 "come up," Then she entered into a short conversation with 
 Twitters relative to a new collar for Betty the near piebald, and 
 the propriety of putting a kicking-strap on Harlequin the off one; 
 • — he was vicious when separated from his companion — when she 
 drove him in the tax-cart. Por the Honourable Letitia delighted 
 in driving a neat vehicle under duty, on the conspicuous sides of 
 which were painted the style and titles of Lancelot Brian De 
 Crux Salusbury, Viscount Chalkstoneheugist, of Chalkstonehengist, 
 Kent. 
 
 They reached the house, and had lunch ; the Amazon proving
 
 IN WHICH THE CURATE GOES TO LONDON. 145 
 
 by ocular demonstration that she had a keen appetite for game-pie, 
 and fuUj understood the flavour of old Madeira. Then she took 
 the curate to her own little boudoir, with the carved oak fittint^s 
 and the walls hung with antlers, brushes, guns, fishiug-rods, eel- 
 spears, whips, spurs, and similar sporting gear, 
 
 "We don't allow pipes here," she said quite gravely, and with- 
 out the slightest touch of irony. " Papa even objected to Mr. 
 Neilgherry's hubble-bubble. Tou know ; — the yellow man who 
 was so long in India, and talks about pig-sticking and tiger- 
 hunting so well, though every other word he says is a crammer, I 
 do believe. You can have a cigar, if you like ; but, for my part, I 
 think they make the curtains smell much worse than pipes do. 
 Mrs. Major Kanaster at St. Becketsbury says so too." 
 
 Pendragon, who had not spoken ten words since he entered the 
 house, respectfully declined the cigar. He had definitively given 
 up smoking, he said. 
 
 "Is there anything else you have given up," asked Letitia, in a 
 dry voice. 
 
 "I am going away," he said, for all explanation. 
 
 " Then you've had a quarrel" — she was nearly saying a "row " 
 — " with the reverend." 
 
 "It is so," he answered, bowing his head sadly. 
 
 " Where are you going ? " 
 
 "To London." 
 
 "What to do?" It is melancholy to have to record it, but 
 Letitia was within an ace of asking " what's your game ? " 
 
 " To work." 
 
 "That's right," said the heiress. "I only wish I could 
 work at something. And so you are going. Poor old Pen- 
 dragon. Poor old fellow, I know all about it. Give us your 
 hand." 
 
 She held out her honest palm and left it in the curate's grasp^ 
 while he pressed it long and cordially. He looked in her face, and 
 saw nothing in that wild, wilful face but truth and generosity- 
 He would have liked to have kissed her. 
 
 "You are a good woman," he murmured, going towards tlie 
 door. " God bless you." 
 
 " Stop," cried Letitia hastily ; " London's a long way off. Pen-
 
 146 THE SEYEN SO^'S OF MAMMON. 
 
 dragon, and the pigs have left off running ready roasted through 
 the streets. Do you want any money ? " 
 
 " I have enough and to spare," the curate made answer, after 
 expressing his gratitude for the offer. 
 
 " Well, if you ever do want any money," she resumed, "write 
 to me, under cover to papa. Ton loill go ? "Well, good bye, 
 Pendragon." 
 
 She gave him her hand again, and again he pressed it and 
 departed. She watched him long from her window striding 
 towards the spot where she had met him. When his form had 
 disappeared, she took up a book. — it was Strutt's Sports and Fas- 
 times, — and tried to read, but the letters danced before her eyes, 
 and she flung the volume down. Then she took up a parchment 
 portfolio and ran through her collection of salmon flies, gorgeous 
 in pheasants' feathers and yellow floss silk and golden wire. And 
 then she threw herself into a chair, and burst into a passionate fit 
 of weeping. 
 
 " A good cry always does me good when I've got the blues," 
 she said, dr^'ing her eyes. "Poor Pendragon! I wish I was a 
 man, or a dressmaker, or a charwoman, or a fairy, or anything else 
 that would enable me to help him ; but it's no good ; and now I 
 think I'll go and see how Brindle gets on." Brindle was the 
 newest-imported Alderney calf in the byre, and the Honourable 
 Miss Salusbury forthwith proceeded to inspect him. 
 
 As for the curate, he walked passed the old gibbet stump and 
 2)ast The Casements, towards whose glancing windows he never 
 looked, and to his lodgings in Swordsley village. His rent was 
 paid. His chattels had already been sent to St. Becketsbury 
 Station, and thence to one farther up the line towards London. 
 He purposed to reach the station by a circuitous route of about 
 eight miles. There was no leave-taking to be got through. He 
 had strictly enjoined his landlady to keep his departure a secret 
 for at least twenty minutes after he was clear of the town ; and 
 the good woman, who loved him, promised to obey. Words of 
 hot displeasure, of furious wrath, had passed between him and 
 Ernest. Each had said things which he would gladly have 
 recalled. It was too late now. The notice he might have 
 demanded had been foregone by mutual consent. The curate
 
 IN WHICH THE CURATE GOES TO LONDON. 147 
 
 was paid the balance of his wages, and was free to go wheresoever 
 he listed. 
 
 The station he was bound for was Tiburnhurst ; but by a long 
 walk round he could reach it without retracing his steps and pass- 
 in"^ The Casements again. He had to leave the Church of St. 
 Mary-la-Douce, which lay at the back of the village, to his left. 
 He halted as he wound round the grassy knoll on whose summit 
 •the timeworn fabric stood. 
 
 "In that grey and crumbling fane," the curate murmured low, 
 as with arms folded he gazed long and earnestly'- at the church, " I 
 have prayed and I have preached, when my lord the rector would 
 grant me his high permission. There I have married, and buried, 
 and christened. There is no grave in that yard that holds a corpse 
 more dead than I am to that which I once was. And my lord 
 rector and my lady Magdalen have trampled on the wretched 
 curate, have they ? Old Church," he finished, raising his right 
 hand almost menacingly, " the struggle is henceforth between you 
 and me." 
 
 And so Euthyn Pendragon turned his face away from the 
 Church of England, and went on his journey, whitherwards he 
 deemed best. And I have heard a wise man say that what is said 
 to be done for Conscience' sake is often done for spite.
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 NO SCIENCE TO ME. SIMS IS A MYSTERY. 
 
 It was on a Tuesday in the month of May, 1851 ; and Mr, 
 Sims, having business to transact in Coger's Inn, Strand, betook 
 himself thither at about ten o'clock on a sunshiny morning. He 
 eyed those who passed him, as was his wont, narrowly ; yet he 
 seemed with his bent-down eyes to be occupied in counting the 
 number of iron plates in the pavement that covered the coal-holes. 
 It should be mentioned that Mr. Sims was accustomed to wear 
 a broad-brimmed hat, which was convenient for many reasons, and 
 that his eyes possessed the faculty of looking round corners. 
 
 Sixteen mouths, or thereabouts, had elapsed since we last had 
 the pleasure of meeting Mr. Sims ; and he was then going to 
 the play. He was bent on the same errand now, although the 
 theatres do not usually open their doors at ten o'clock in the 
 morning. But the whole of human life was a play to Mr. Sims, 
 and he was always, to use a Grallicism, " assisting " at the repre- 
 sentations of the Theatre Royal Humanity. He did not care to 
 be a conspicuous actor on the noisy stage thereof. He was con- 
 tent to be Signor N. N., non nominato, as the Opera play-bills call 
 the illustrious incogniti who, in a bar and a half of recitative, 
 announce that the coach is at the door, or that the fatal hour has 
 arrived. Or rather he liked to be prompter, or to have the care 
 of the trap-door department, or to stand patiently at the wing 
 with a pan of blue fire, waiting to liglit up the last scene with a 
 lurid glare. 
 
 Time had not thinned the flowing locks of Mr. Sims. He had 
 none that flowed for the Great Gleaner to operate upon. Nature 
 had provided him with a close-set and spiky black caul of hair 
 much resembling a horsehair cushion. Time had inserted, since 
 January '50, a few thousand spikes of rusty grey among the sable
 
 KO SCIENCE TO MK. SIMS IS A MYSTERY. 149 
 
 stubble, and on the crown of his head had mown a little circular 
 tonsure quite bald. His nose was a little more peaked, and a 
 trifle more purple in hue, and that was all. 
 
 Mr. Sims came from the west, and set his watch by the Horse 
 Guards. The watch very much resembled the model of a potato 
 in silver, and the disc which prudent housewives sometimes slice 
 off that esculent, to allow the steam to escape while boiling, was 
 represented by the dial. It had belonged to a railway engine- 
 driver, and to it was attached a history. At the corner of St. 
 Martin's Lane it is on record that Mr. Sims purchased a penny- 
 worth of apples. There is nothing so very strange in this fact ; 
 but it may be just hinted that Mr. Sims entered into a somewhat 
 lengthy conversation with the fruit-seller, who was an Irishwoman 
 of tlie purest growth, and earned a considerable addition to her 
 weekly income hj colouring cutty pipes for gentlemen whose heads 
 were too weak to allow them to swallow about an ounce of nicotine 
 every day. A clean pipe, half a pound of the strongest tobacco, 
 half-a-crown, and a week's fair smoking, given to Biddy McGrath, 
 and she would colour a cutty for you as black as my hat. 
 
 " Five times within a fortnight, eh ? " said Mr. Sims, as he 
 turned down King William Street. " Per watching closely, and 
 never losing a minute, there's nothing like an apple-woman. 
 She never moves, and nobody suspects her. For following, give 
 me an orange-girl." So you see that Mr. Sims did business even 
 as he walked. 
 
 In Mid-Strand Mr. Sims held brief parley with a Hansom 
 cabman, which ended in that charioteer giving him a ticket, 
 receiving a shilling, laying his forefinger by the side of his nose, 
 and driving on. Had Mr. Sims designed to take a drive anywhere, 
 and had he suddenly changed his mind ? At all events, he 
 reached Coger's Inn on foot, and entering the open doorway of 
 jN'o. 20, mounted briskly to the third floor. 
 
 Coger's Inn is not in the Strand, but oS it, and is about the 
 dingiest, rottenest old inn of Chancery in the metropolis. It 
 should have been pulled down a century since ; but as, let out in 
 tenements, it realises a considerable and tolerably safe annual 
 rental, its proprietors — whoever they may be — have excellent 
 reasons for allowing it to stand. The windows are never cleaned ;
 
 loO THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 the staircases are ne'v^er swept ; tlie mangy old courtyard is never 
 "weeded or rolled. It is a sandy desert in fine weatlier, and a 
 miry puddle in r/et v/eatlier. It was a place of legal habitations 
 once, but very few men of the law care to abide in it now. Its 
 tenants are all cloudy and mysterious. They come nobody knows 
 whence, and go nobody knows where. They have slips of foolscap 
 pasted on their doors, saying that they will be " back in five 
 minutes ;" return in ten years, paste a fresh slip over the old one, 
 saying that they will be " back in a quarter of an hour," and 
 never return at all. Letters fall through the slits of the door, and 
 moulder away there ; cats die of starvation, and the crannies of 
 lonely chambers are fusty with the skeletons of mice. It would 
 be a bold flea that took up his quarters within those pinched pre- 
 cincts, thinking to live on the fat of the land, or of the lodgers, 
 and hoping to drink his pint of blood a day like a gentleman. 
 Coger's Inn was the very place to suit Mr. Sims, and for that 
 reason he had chambers there. 
 
 The third-floor back, No. 20, had a huge outer door, which was 
 a mass of knobs and staples, and iron bands and plates, and great 
 crcss-beams of oak. Tou might have murdered a man behind that 
 door, and nobody on the staircase would have been the wiser for 
 it ; nor if, by holding the ear to the letter-sHt, the screams of the 
 dying man had been heard, could any one without a dozen sledge- 
 hammers, or an engineer's petard, have burst the massive portal 
 open. "When Mr. Sims had reached this door, and produced his 
 latch-key, he tapped one of the iron plates approvingly with that 
 instrument, remarking, in a satisfied under-tone, that it (meaning 
 the door) was uncoiiimonly strong, and quiet, and safe. The key 
 looked large enough to have fitted the great door of IN'ewgate, and 
 to it, by a piece of red tape, was attached a tiny little Chubb 
 that might have opened a lady's portfolio or a pocket-ledger. 
 Mr. Sims applied the big key, which made a noise of mingled 
 ferocity and anger as it was turned twice or thrice round in the 
 lock, and so passed into his chambers. It has been omitted to 
 state, that in the midst of the mass of iron and oak forming the 
 door was painted in faded white letters the name of " Tiloe and 
 Co." AYhether Mr. Sims was Filoe and Co., or Tiloe and Co. 
 had once lived there, but had left the place a quarter of a
 
 NO SCIENCE TO MR. SHIS IS A MYSTERY. 151 
 
 century since, or the day before yesterday, is uncertain and im- 
 material. 
 
 There was an inner door, panelled, smooth, and knockerless, and 
 with the minutest of keyholes, to which Mr. Sims applied his 
 Chubb, and was fairly within his premises. He who was behind 
 the smooth-panelled door might have seen that it was backed by 
 one solid sheet of iron. " An Englishman's house is his castle," 
 soliloquised Mr. Sims ; '■' and, egad, I think Coger's Castle would 
 stand a pretty strong siege." 
 
 Mr. Sims's chambers comprised three rooms, each with a single 
 window, through whose infinitely dirty panes could be faintly 
 descried an agreeable perspective of roofs and chimney-pots. For 
 this was the third-floor back, and the background of Coger's Inn 
 was Cadger's Market. The rooms were en suite; and as Mr. 
 Sims stood at the first one he heard a great noise of scuffling and 
 stamping, the clatter of some metallic substance, and the sound of 
 a human voice crying, 
 
 " Saha ! Saha ! there ! Come on, three, six, twelve of you ! 
 Come on, ye wolves ! Bufialmacco the E-uthless never yields ! " 
 
 IMr. Sims did not seem in the least disconcerted by this strange 
 discourse, but entered the room, which was low and dusty, very 
 bare of furniture, but, with what little there was, of a counting- 
 house character ; and in the centre of whose carpetless floor stood 
 a tall youth about seventeen, marked with the small-pox, and 
 endowed with a shock head of hair of the hue that may be called 
 a fine sunset, inasmuch that it was flaming red. He was stamping 
 very violently on the deal boards, and brandishing an old broad- 
 sword, and occasionally dealing a sounding thwack to an ofiice- 
 desk, adjuring some imaginary enemy, by the name of Spadacapo, 
 to " come on." 
 
 " At it again, Buff"," Mr. Sims tranquilly remarked. " TVhere 
 are the letters, and has anybody called ? " 
 
 "Bufialmacco the Kuthless," or Buff", as by default of any 
 better name I must call him, was almost breathless with excite- 
 ment and the broadsword exercise. He did not appear at all 
 ashamed in being detected in his strange occupation, but, leaning 
 on the hilt of his weapon, informed his master that there was a 
 heap of letters in the next room, and that nobody had called
 
 152 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 except the Gas, wlio had looked at the meter, and found they had 
 only burned eighteenpenuyworth during the last quarter. 
 
 " And quite enough, too, BufF," Mr. Sims cheerfully remarked, 
 " When gas is given away, we will burn more of it. As I'm 
 going to be very busy for the nest hour, you will oblige me by 
 suspending your infernal row during that period ; after which, I 
 will see anybody who calls." 
 
 Mr. Sims passed through the second room, which was entirely 
 empty, unless a huge splash of ink in the middle of the floor 
 could be called furniture. He entered the third room, his own 
 private sanctum, and carefully locked the door, leaving, according 
 to his already-mentioned principle, the key therein. Buffal- 
 macco the Ruthless, being temporarily prohibited from indulging 
 in the broadsword exercise, betook himself to his library, which, 
 in a very greasy, tattered, and coverless condition, stood on a 
 shelf by the window, and consisted of copies of the exciting dramas 
 of The Castle Spectre, Jonatlian Bradford, and The Iron Chest, 
 an odd volume of the Newgate Calendar, the Sam-Hall Songster, 
 and sundry numbers of a thrilling romance entitled Murder Castle ; 
 or, the Heads of tlie Headless. Buif had commenced taking in 
 The Hatchet of Horror ; or, Love and Madness ; but he found 
 Murder Castle more attractive, and so dropped The Hatchet. 
 
 " An invaluable boy, that," Mr. Sims said, taking off his plain 
 black frock, and donning a dressing-gown of grey striped flannel, 
 " He lives in tlie realms of fancy and the A^ictoria Theatre. His 
 wages enable him to go four times a week to the upper gallery, 
 and he is happy. He could rob me if he liked very conveniently, 
 but he is scrupulously honest. So long as he has enough for the 
 gallery, thousands might pass through his hands without a penny 
 sticking to his fingers. I know it, for time out of mind I have 
 laid traps for him. Here's one, for instance." And from a 
 pyramid of at least two hundred and fifty penny-post letters Sims 
 turned up one, the seal of which he carefully broke, and, from 
 several thicknesses of paper in the envelope, took out twenty-four 
 postage-stamps. Mr, Sims had himself posted this letter to him- 
 self on the preceding afternoon ; but he had been careful to have 
 the address written in a stran£:e hand. He usuallv tried this 
 little manoeuvre about four or five times every week, always
 
 NO SCIENCE TO MR. SIMS IS A MYSTEIRY. 153 
 
 selecting a different handwriting, and had never found one of his 
 letters miscarry. 
 
 " Here's anotlier little test," muttered Mr. Sims as he opened 
 another letter, and, peering anxiously into its enclosure, took 
 forth, with the greatest caution, a liuman hair, which he held up 
 for an instant to the light, and then blew away. 
 
 " Letters may be unsealed and resealed," thought Mr. Sims ; 
 " but if I tell my correspondent, by word of mouth, to pluck out 
 one of his hairs and pop it into the envelope before he sends it, I 
 don't think it very probable that a letter would be opened without 
 the hair being displaced." 
 
 Mr. Sims said, luckily, none of this aloud, else Buffalmacco the 
 ^Ruthless might by chance have heard the things he should not. 
 Mr. Sims addressed himself to his own inner self, and hugged his 
 secrets in his own secretive bosom. He continued opening 
 letters until long past the hour of which he had spoken had 
 expired, when a discreet tap was heard at the door, accompanied 
 by a more discreet cough. 
 
 '•' What is it. Buff ? " he asked, opening the door to the red- 
 headed youth. 
 
 " She's here," the fencing clerk, if clerk he was, responded, and 
 pointing with his thumb over his left shoulder. 
 
 " Phew ! " and Mr. Sims gave utterance to a prolonged whistle. 
 " Dear me, Mrs. Clapperton," he continued, pushing past Buff, 
 and eagerly ushering a handsomely-attired lady into his sanctum, 
 " to what may I ascribe the honour of this unexpected visit ? " 
 
 He knew very well, did Mr. Sims, that the handsomely-attired 
 lady's name was not Mrs. Clapperton. Perhaps Bufialmacco the 
 Ruthless knew it quite as well ; but it was the invariable practice 
 with Mr. Sims never to address a client who called upon him by 
 his or her proper name. It kept things so snug, he was wont to 
 say. The handsomely-attired lady was a client of INIr. Sims, and 
 her name was Mrs. Armytage. She was out of mourning, and 
 looked prettier than ever. 
 
 " Fait-il gros temps dans la cJiioiirme?^' asked Mr. Sims, — 
 what necessity was there for hiua to speak French ? — when he had 
 handed the lady to a chair, had looked the door and left the key 
 •inside. "Is it business ? or is it on purely sentimental grounds
 
 154 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 that we are come to see our Sims, all in tlie morning early? Has 
 the obdurate heart at Hoogendracht relented?" 
 
 " It is not that," replied Mrs. Armytage ; " the heart you speak 
 of is as hard, and I am as wretched as ever." 
 
 She looked more scared and terrified than she had done at the 
 room in the hotel that night. 
 
 " Then there is a red lamp out ; where is the danger ? " 
 
 *' I want five hundred pounds." 
 
 " Pive hundred jars of pickled gherkins ! "Why, to my certain 
 knowledge, ma'am, you had five thousand pounds at your banker's 
 only yesterday." 
 
 " I know that, but I want five hundred pounds directly : this 
 instant." 
 
 " Draw a cheque, then. Here are pens, ink, and paper." 
 
 " It's of no use, he won't take it." 
 
 " Who won't take it ? " 
 
 " Sims, I want five hundred pounds. Let me have them at 
 once, for mercy's sake, or all is over." 
 
 " Is it a real smash ?" Mr. Sims asked searchingly. 
 
 " It is ruin and despair. Tou know that I never lie to you." 
 
 " I don't think you do ; but you keep back the truth till the 
 last moment, which is quite as bad ; and then the train shunts 
 away on the branch line, that leads to smash, and after that we 
 come to our Sims and eat humble pie." 
 
 " Will you give me the money ?" 
 
 " I haven't got it. I've only a bunch of keys, sevenpence half- 
 penny, and half an Abernethy biscuit,— my breakfast, ma'am, — in 
 my pocket, and eight pounds fourteen in postage-stamps. There 
 has been a joyful delivery this morning." 
 
 " Draw me a cheque, then." 
 
 " Tou know I never draw cheques myself. I have q blank one, 
 however, with somebody else's name to it; but where's the use of 
 it ? He won't take a clieque." 
 
 " Tes he will, with a line from you." 
 
 " Who will ? " 
 
 " His man is down stairs." 
 
 "Whose?" 
 
 " Tigg's."
 
 NO SCIENCE TO MK. SIMS IS A ]\[YSTERY. 155 
 
 " Ephraim Tigg of Stockwell !" Mr. Sims repeated, with another 
 prolonged Avhistle ; " I thought so. And so you've found out again 
 that he's a Easper, have you ? " 
 
 " Will you let me have the money ? " 
 
 " I must, ma'am," responded Mr. Sims, shrugging his shoulders. 
 " I can't afford to let the concern go to smash, although, if this 
 kind of business continues, I shall be obliged to take my capital 
 out of the firm. "Why on earth can't you come and see me before 
 you pay that walking museum of the College of Surgeons a visit, 
 instead of afterwards ? Did your Sims ever refuse you the genial 
 loan ? " 
 
 " I can't help it," said Mrs. Armytage, with a murmur that was 
 half a groan. 
 
 " I don't think you can," observed Mr. Sims, scanning her from 
 beneath his eyebrows, as from a huge leathern pocket-book he 
 produced a blank cheque and filled it up. " There, Ephraim will 
 take Eiloe and Co.'s signature, particularly if I put this upon it.'* 
 
 He made a minute tick in the corner of the cheque, partly with 
 a pen, partly with his nail, and handed the document to her. 
 
 " You have a flying pen, ma'am," he observed calmly, " and the 
 bump of imitation ought to be strongly developed somewhere 
 among those pretty curls ; but I think that mark will puzzle even 
 you, my lady. I suppose you don't want me any more, till the 
 next time ; but take care. It's a long lane that has no turning, 
 
 and, as sure as my name's Des Sims, I mean, — the very nest 
 
 thoroughfare on the wrong-hand side is C. C. C. Street." 
 
 She had scarcely heard his concluding remark. She crumpled 
 the cheque in her hand, and walked to the door, and was gone. 
 
 " Impulse again," Mr. Sims muttered ; " I thought so. Eive 
 times within a fortnight. Za cJiiourme cJiauffe. If that woman 
 doesn't put a stopper on her impulse, it will most inevitably end 
 in the cultivation of the science of botany in the pleasant bay of 
 that name. 'StvJS.^'' he continued, " I'm at home to everybody. I 
 think I shall have a harvest this morning." 
 
 And Mr. Sims went on opening letters, and taking out postage- 
 stamps.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 EMBAREASSilENTS OF A EICH TOUNG MAN. 
 
 It is but weary ■work opening letters ; but when every other 
 one or so contains from half a dozen to half a crown's worth of 
 postage-stamps, the operation becomes profitable, and the labour 
 may be borne. Mr. Sims got through his work quite cheerfully, 
 and whistled as he went, not certainly for want of thought, but 
 as a little accompaniment to a pleasant task. Now and then he 
 came upon a letter which contained, not postage-stamps, but a 
 coin carefully stuck in a card or secured under a seal, — now a 
 sixpence, now a shilling, and now actually a half-sovereign ; and 
 at the discovery of such a treasure Mr. Sims would shake his 
 head : in a very placable manner, however. 
 
 " When will the public learn common prudence and caution ? " 
 asked Mr. Sims, suspending his whistling, and carefully pocketing 
 a golden effigy of her Majesty, which for greater security had been 
 carefully wrapped up in a piece of soft paper crumpled enough as 
 to texture, and oleaginous enough as to surface to warrant the 
 surmise that it had originally served as a confining locket for the 
 tresses of some unknown Pyrrha. " Are the repeated warnings 
 of the Postmaster- General, are the innumerable convictions at 
 the C.C.C., are the pleasing pamphlets of the Ordiuary of New- 
 gate — ' A double Eap at the Postman's Conscience,' and so forth, 
 — of no avail ? It is wicked, it is cruel, to send coin by post. 
 You nius'n't send leeches, and you mus'n't send lucifer-matches, 
 and you mus'n't send sucking-pigs, and you decidedly oughtn't to 
 send money. It places undue temptations in the way of the 
 humble and ill-remunerated postman, and it wears out the letter- 
 boxes. Besides," he continued, slipping three fourpenny-pieces 
 into his waistcoat-pocket, " money may be marked, may be sent 
 for sinister objects, and may lead to unpleasant revelations con-
 
 EMBARRASSMENTS OF A RICH YOUNG MAN. 157 
 
 cerning one's little business transactions before the stipendiary 
 magistrates. Hum: what have we here ? " 
 
 No postage-stamps had to be taken out this time. A common^ 
 cheap, salmon-coloured envelope being opened, disgorged a piece 
 of coarse sugar-paper, in which were rather crammed than folded 
 at least a dozen halves of what seemed to be five and ten pound 
 notes of the Bank of England. Mr. Sims carefully took account 
 of the numbers of these documents ; then as carefully lighted a 
 little taper, walked to the hearth, set the notes on fire, watched 
 them crackle into flame and smoulder into black powder, embossed 
 here and there with "five "and "ten " in grey gothic, and finally 
 stamped and ground them with his heel into an impalpable smear 
 of dust. 
 
 "Plenty more where they come from," he softly remarked, 
 walkinsf back to his letters : " but those half-notes will never find 
 their brothers and sisters, I fancy, nor call out for gum-water." 
 
 Mr. Sims had not the slightest appearance of belonging to the 
 nautical profession, nor of having recently assisted in the capture 
 of an enemy's v.essel, and so come into the possession of prize- 
 money ; and yet what he had just done was suggestive of the old 
 stories current at the Common Hard, Portsmouth, of the brav& 
 old days when Jack-tars kindled their pipes with bank-notes, or 
 ate them, sandwich fashion, between slices of bread-and-butter. 
 Was he about to fry a gold watch, toss all his loose silver out of 
 window, or paper the ceiling with postage stamps, next ? Not at 
 all ; he went on opening letters. 
 
 They were all addressed to Coger's Inn, but not by any means 
 were all of them superscribed with Mr. Sims's name. Some were 
 for "Professor Merryscope, Ph. Dr.;" others were for "Aber- 
 nethy Halford Hunter, M.D. ; " others for "Miss de Eosen- 
 burg;" others for "Nemo," " Aliquis," " Tamen ; " others for 
 nearly every letter in the Greek alphabet, and almost every com- 
 bination of initials. Some contained, in addition to postage- 
 stamps, and w'rapped in more or less greasy scraps of paper, locks 
 of hair, — brown, grey, black, auburn, chestnut, sandy, and fiery 
 red, coarse and fine, curled and straight. Professor Merryscope, 
 Ph. Dr., had to deal with these ; and the senders of the stamps 
 and the locks of hair all made urgent requests to be favoured
 
 158 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 with certain inforaation, mainly relative tj love, marriage, and 
 the pursuit of riches, which, it appeared, only Professor Merry- 
 scope, when duly provided with postage-stamps, could give. 
 There were people who wrote to Abernethy Halford Hunter, 
 M.D., eagerly asking to be relieved, by retuni of post and on 
 receipt of stamps, from "nervous fluttering," " u.naccountable 
 sensations," "general depression," "dreadful all-overishness," and 
 kindred ailments for which remedies are not to be found in the 
 ordinary pharmacopoeia. Scores of people corresponded with 
 Miss de Eoseuburg, enclosing scraps of their handwriting, — 
 villanous scrawls in most cases, — and demanding revelations con- 
 cerning their personal characters and future prospects in life. 
 Some were anxious with regard to hair-dyes, cosmetiques, and 
 "Xinon del'Enclos'Eevivifier," which was warranted (for eighteen 
 postage-stamps) to make people of sixty look younger than youths 
 of sixteen. Denizens of Dorsetshire were desirous to know how 
 they might earn a genteel livelihood by ornamental leather-paint- 
 ing and decorating Japanese lacquer-ware. Correspondents from 
 Sunderland presented their compliments to " Nemo," and were 
 perfectly certain that they were the parties rightly entitled to the 
 9,089Z. 13s. 4id. unclaimed dividends then lying in the name of 
 Scrookidge in the Bank of England. A confiding party at 
 Bolton-le-Sands was wistful to learn the nature of the desirable 
 investment by which (only eight hundred pounds outlay) a per- 
 manent income of five hundred per annum could be secured. 
 Applications for pecuniary loans, accompanied by oifers of every 
 kind of security, from landed estates and dock-warrants, to piano- 
 fortes and silver spoons, were numerous. But almost every body 
 who wrote either to Professor Merryscope, Ph. Dr., to Miss de 
 Eosenburg, to Abernethy Halford Hunter, M.D., to "Nemo," or 
 "Aliquis," or "Tamen," or "Beta," or " Sigma," to " A.B.C." or 
 " X.T.Z." sent postage-stamps or coin of the realm. 
 
 "If I could only make my mind up to take post-ofiice orders," 
 thought Mr. Sims, " ' Nemo ' alone would be worth twenty pounds 
 a week. But I won't. That's an impulse I can subdue. Many 
 a man of business has found his bill of indictment in a P.-O. 
 order." 
 
 He arranged the letters in different piles methodically, tied up
 
 EMBAERASSMENTS OF A EICH YOUNG MAN. 159 
 
 some, filed others. About a dozen or so he burnt. These did not 
 enclose any stamps. The contents, indeed, were generally brief, 
 and not complimentary. " S\viudler," WTote one defaulter, "if I 
 didn't live at Berwick-upou-Tweed, I'd hunt you out and kick 
 vou." " Villain," a second one had the ill manners to express 
 himself, " your plausible humbug won't go down with me ; " and 
 " Scoundrel " was the coarse commencement of a third ; the fourth 
 bec^inning with the rude apostrophe, " Eascal." One enemy — 
 even Mr, Sims had enemies — mingled a spice of humour with his 
 malice. There was something round, flat, and hard in his letter, 
 which any one might have reasonably conjectured to be either a 
 sixpence or a half-sovereign. On examination it proved to be a 
 farthing, and was encircled by this legend, " Ha, ha ! you thought 
 you'd caught me, did you ? " Mr. Sims was not at all vexed, nay, 
 seemed somewhat tickled. He burnt the letter, but pocketed the 
 farthing with a smile. 
 
 " A droll dog, a very droll dog," he said, whistling between 
 whiles. " After all, it's cash. A pin a day is a groat a year. A 
 farthing put out at interest will make a man as rich as Croesus, if 
 he can only live to the age of Methusaleh. What do I care for 
 their loud words ? Let 'em abuse as much as they like. Let 'em 
 come here. If even they get into Coger's Castle, they won't get 
 anything out of Buffalmacco the Euthless and Filoe and Co." 
 
 He walked to the window and tapped his nail against the dirty 
 pane. 
 
 " If one cared to call a charwoman in, and have all this grime 
 cleaned oflV he chuckled, " and if there was anything down there 
 besides cats and sparrows and chimneys, I might pass my leisure 
 time in seeing the fools pass. How many hundreds a minute, I 
 wonder? " 
 
 His principal work was over, and he had begun to dally with 
 the rest. The letters, tied and taped and filed, he swept into a 
 cupboard and locked up. A special pile which bore either his 
 own name, Sims, Coger's Inn, or that of the mysterious firm of 
 riloe and Co., he reserved on his table. The silver was all in his 
 pocket. The stamps he had entombed in a drawer. And when- 
 ever Mr. Sims opened any thing it was with a key, and he always 
 locked everything after him. His very trousers and waistcoat
 
 IGO THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 pockets seemed ruled by Chubb and Bramah, so tiglitly did they 
 close. 
 
 " I wouder," mused Sims, frugally lunching off the Abernethy 
 biscuit of which he had spokeu to Mrs. Armytage, and perhaps 
 also in compliment to the illustrious surgeon whose name he had 
 borrowed, — " I wonder who the ' married gentleman ' is who 
 advertises for unruly children to tame ? I think I could tame 'em 
 at a guiuea a lesson. Dear me, even Mr. Van Amburg might 
 have saved himself a good deal of trouble, if he'd brought a Bengal 
 tiger or two to Coger's Inn. Unruly children ! Why, Buff 
 could tame a dozen of 'em before breakfast. Hark ! he's at it 
 again." 
 
 Long quiescence had proved unbearable to Buffalmacco the 
 Huthless, and emboldened by the iuterval that had occurred since 
 he was last summoned, he was stamping on the floor and thwack- 
 ing the ofiice desk with the broadsword more fiercely than ever. 
 
 " 'Ear me," — to this effect was Buffiilmacco the Euthless's 
 voice heard through the door, — " 'ear me, minions, were yon blue 
 skyey a sea of bl-1-ludd, were heviy blade of grass a bleeding corse 
 in my path, I would not falter ; no ! Saha ! slaves of the vile 
 Oppimo, come on ! " And the slaves of Oppimo the Vile appa- 
 rently coming on, in theory, Buffalmacco the Ruthless went at 
 them in practice until the crazy room shook again. 
 
 Mr. Sims unlocked his door and called out, " Buff." 
 
 " Before you go quite mad, my young friend," he remarked 
 firmly but mildly, " you will oblige me by putting that sword away, 
 and doing something towards earning your wages. Fill up twenty- 
 six characters by handwriting, a dozen Ninon de I'Enclos recipes, 
 and fourteen genteel livelihoods directly; do you hear ? You may 
 do a few nervous affections, and futures foretold too, for stock. 
 "We're sure to want 'em." 
 
 Buffalmacco the Euthless, who from the fiercest had suddenly 
 become the meekest boy in all Coger's Inn, betook himself to a 
 high stool at the ofiice desk, from the recesses of which he pro- 
 duced sundry packets of note-paper, partially filled up with 
 lithographed characters in imitation of manuscript, and in ink of 
 various hues. 
 
 Mr. Sims went back to his room, and read his own letters, and
 
 EMBARRASSMENTS OF A raCII YOUNG MAN. IGl 
 
 those destined for Filoe and Co. They were of a very different 
 character to the previous instalment of his correspondence. There 
 was no question now of paltry postage stamps, or shillings, or half- 
 sovereigns. Mr. Sims was up to his eyes in thousands. He read 
 of mortgages, and post-obits, of deeds and bonds, of bills and pro- 
 missory notes, of assignments and reversions. 
 
 "Lord Eacketborough," he mused inwardly. " Is he good for 
 twopence-halfpenny yet? Poor old Tenniscourt is very nearly 
 done up. The Southbank has got young Draff Pluskisson of the 
 Blues. Good-bye to the broad acres of Vealsborough. Can Mrs. 
 Mountain Earsleigh have five thousand on her note of hand ? No, 
 she can't. Will I lend Sir Paul Pindar any more on the Wake- 
 field estate ? No, I won't. Will I give Mr. Pishton Shiftleigh 
 time, because he's got neuralgia and has lately lost his aunt ? Ko, 
 I won't. What have I to do with his neuralgia ? Hang his 
 neuralgia ! Why didn't his aunt leave him money enough to take 
 up his bills with ? Now then, Bufi", what is it ? " 
 
 Buff had knocked at the door. AVhen his master opened it, he 
 handed him a card. Mr. Sims looked at it, and said curtly, " Show 
 him in." He flung his door wide open, sat down before his great 
 leathern-covered table, — there was not a letter or a vestige of 
 created paper on it now, all had been spirited away with panto- 
 mimic rapidity, — thrust his hands into his pockets, and looked 
 prepared for anything. 
 
 He was quite prepared for his visitor, who turned out to be Sir 
 Jasper Goldthorpe, neat and spotless as to outward appearance as 
 ever, but very pale and careworn, and bowed ; not at all the man 
 he Avas at Christmas Eighteen hundred and forty-nine. 
 
 Mr. Sims scanned him narrowly under his lids. " He outran 
 me bravely he thought, but I have caught him up. Aha ! I have 
 caught him up." 
 
 It might have been long illness and long mental suffering, but 
 Sir Jasper, before whom all men were wont to tremble, seemed 
 quite meek and humble— almost cowed, to tell the truth, before 
 the mean little man with the grey head and the purple nose. 
 
 " Shall I close the door ? '' the baronet asked. 
 
 " No," returned Mr. Sims shortly, and almost snappishly. 
 
 " I had better," Sir Jasper softly urged. 
 
 M
 
 162 THE SEVEN SO^■S OF MAMMON. 
 
 " 'No," repeated the other. " The boy is deaf and blind, save 
 when I tell it." 
 
 "Desboeotjgh!" cried Jasper, appealingly. 
 
 " Hay ! " exclaimed Mr. Sims. " AVhat's that ? You've made 
 a mistake. BufF," he continued, rising, and calling to the ruthless 
 clerk, " the gentleman's come to the wrong chambers. There's 
 no Mr. Desborough here. These are Filoe and Co.'s offices." 
 
 But BufFalmacco the Euthless continued filling up the litho- 
 graphed papers, as though he had been in good sooth as deaf as his 
 master had declared him to be. 
 
 " Shovr the gentleman out," Mr. Sims vrent on. 
 
 But BufFalmacco the Euthless being blind as -well as deaf for 
 the nonce, didn't see the gentleman, and never turned his red 
 head. 
 
 " Desborough, Mr. Desborough ! " Sir Jasper broke in, catching 
 the little man by his garment. " For Heaven's sake hear me. I 
 conjure you, I entreat you. Here, let me shut the door." 
 
 Mr. Sims made a faint show of resistance, but eventually suf- 
 fered the rich man to do as he asked. He who had always been 
 accustomed to have doors' — golden doors, too — opened and shut 
 for him ; he who could raise the rate of discount by a nod, and 
 make money tight in the City by crooking his little finger ! 
 
 Mr. Sims sat down as before in his chair, his hands in his 
 pockets and his lips close set. 
 
 " Once more, you will hear me, Des ," the baronet was 
 
 beginning. 
 
 "Don't know the party," broke in Mr. Sims: "he's dead. 
 Dead and gone years ago. There used to be a Mr. Sims here, 
 but he's gone away. He went oif to Australia by the Black Ball 
 line of packets last January twelvemonth, and is supposed to have 
 been lost in the bush, and eaten up by Buugaree, King of the 
 Blacks." 
 
 " What am I to call you, then ? But for mercy's sake, hear 
 me." 
 
 " Say Filoe and Co., and I'll listen to you. I'm Filoe, and the 
 boy in the next room's the Co." 
 
 " I should know tlie name well enough," Sir Jasper retorted, 
 with a transient touch of his old haughtiness. " Much stamped
 
 EilBAERASSMENTS OP A IIICH YOUNG MAN. 163 
 
 paper bearing that endorsemeut has passed tlirough my 
 hands." 
 
 " Curiously," replied Mr. Sims alias Piloe, " I've a quantity of 
 it myself accepted by one Captain "William Goldthorpe, of whom 
 you may know something, and which I'm going to endorse this 
 afternoon to a friend of mine in the City." 
 
 The baronet bit his lips. "I'm no stranger to my son's 
 embarrassments," he said. " Munificent as his allowance has 
 always been, I know that he has exceeded it, and that he has 
 plunged into a vortex of profligate expenditure." 
 
 " Do you know that he bets ? " Mr. Sims asked calmly. 
 
 " I have heard so." 
 
 *' Do you know that he gambles ? " 
 
 " I fear that he has become addicted to the unhappy passion of 
 
 P%-" 
 
 Mr. Sims might have winced a little, but he did not ; he only 
 
 sneered. 
 
 " Mere paralysis in the elbow," he said. "There used to be a 
 Mr. Desborough who was afilicted with that complaint, and died. 
 Do you know that the Captain's up to the eyes in all manner of 
 wickedness that costs money, and that next AVednesday is the 
 Derby Day, and that he has backed Orcus, — as if that three-legged 
 brute could ever get round Tatteuham corner, — and that he stands 
 to lose twenty thousand ? " 
 
 Sir Jasper slightly groaned, and hid his face in his handkerchief 
 
 " You were alwavs an old humbug," Mr. Sims remarked con- 
 temptuously : it was Belphegor bearding Mammon. " You knew 
 very well that he was deep in Filoe and Co.'s books, only you 
 weren't quite aware of the fact that I was Tiloe. "Why couldn't 
 jou look at the name over the door when you came hunting for 
 dead men, you old stupid ?" 
 
 It was a peculiarity of Mr. Sims, when he used harsh words, 
 never to make them audible in a harsh voice. As he upbraided 
 Mrs. Armytage, so he upbraided Sir Jasper Goldthorpe ; and the 
 tone of his last speech had been quite mellifluous. 
 
 "It was not on his account, I called upon you," Sir Jasper 
 answered, with an unquiet look towards his tormentor. 
 
 " Of course it wasn't, it was on your own ; but, if you've no 
 
 m'2
 
 164 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 objection, I will settle the captain's business first. He owes me 
 thirty-seven hundred pounds. Are you going to pay me, here 
 and now, or am I to lock up Sir Jasper Goldthorpe's son in Cursitor 
 Street?" 
 
 " I would do all I could to satisfy the claims against him, but I 
 fear that he has other liabilities." 
 
 " Others ! By that I suppose you mean that there are more 
 Kloes and Co. than one. I dare say twenty thousand wouldn't 
 cover the paper he has out, let alone the nice little nest-egg he's 
 laid for the Derby. There's scarcely a bill-discounter in London 
 who hasn't got his precious autograph. They think he's pretty 
 safe, knowing what his father seems to be, but not knowing what 
 he really is so well as I do. And yet I don't know anything, do 
 I, Sir Jasper ? But I'll tell you what : our people are getting shy 
 even of the son of such a rich man as Sir Jasper Goldthorpe. He's 
 but a younger son, you know, after all. One off the title ; might 
 have been two but for that accident." 
 
 Sir Jasper groaned again. 
 
 "Yes," the merciful Sims continued, "I dare say you do feel 
 that. Terrible drop it was, to be sure. How are the mighty 
 fallen ! and the rest of it. Dreadful blow to Miss Hill too, whom 
 our little lady yonder is so fond of. But, mark my words, Sir J., 
 young Hopeful's creditors will sell him up, and that in two twos. 
 Not but what they'll lend him plenty more money by and by; but 
 they want to see what he's made of, and how far his governor will 
 shell out. As to his betting-book, you'll have to pay that on the 
 nail, if Orcus goes to the bad. That's a case of must. Captain 
 Goldthorpe can't be a defaulter." 
 
 " Is there no compromising his imprudent wagers ? " 
 
 " There's very little compromising down on the south side of St. 
 George's Hospital, Hyde Park Corner. Hungry and sharp's the 
 word, and if there's any meat on him, they'll have it. You'll get 
 much more quarter at the hands of our people. The Jews will 
 take anything so long as it's double the amount they originally 
 advanced. It's only Christians that go in for two hundred and 
 fifty per cent. But even they'll compromise, if you stick out and 
 threaten sale of commission, Insolvent Court, cutting ofi" with a 
 shilling, and so on. Take Filoe and Co. for instance. I'm not
 
 EMBAPaiASSlIENTS OF A RICH YOUNG MAN. 165 
 
 unreasonable, any more than the Co., who has ten shillings a week, 
 paid every Saturday at two p.m. We're open, to au offer, we're 
 to be squared. The captain owes us thirty-seven hundred pounds. 
 Give us a cheque for three thousand, and we'll cry quits." 
 
 "And how much actual money has the wretched boy had at 
 usurious interest ? " 
 
 " If by usurious interest at sixty per cent., and the renewals 
 and et ceteras, which, after you've paid the original debt, always 
 leave you more in debt than you were before, you mean ' actual 
 money,' I dare say the captain's had a cool fifteen hundred pounds, 
 and that's liberal. All hard cash, mind. I never giVe wine or 
 pictures, or any of that sort of trumpery." 
 
 " I will give you a cheque for two thousand five hundred pounds 
 to-morrow." 
 
 " Won't do," Mr. Sims calmly returned. " When Tiloe and 
 Co. make an offer, F. and Company never depart from it. The 
 Co. in the next room wouldn't abate a sixpence for half a week's 
 salary. Say, when will you send us the cheque ? " 
 
 " Tou shall have the money, if it be imperatively necessary. A 
 letter enclosing it shall be left for any messenger you choose to 
 send after ten o'clock to-morrow morning. But there are other 
 liabilities. Money is much in demand, and is very hard to get 
 just now." 
 
 " That speech from Sir Jasper Goldthorpe," Mr. Sims exclaimed, 
 in graceful raillery, — " those words from a gentleman who coins 
 golds, who eats, drinks, and sleeps upon money-bags ! Bah ! you 
 are jesting." 
 
 " I am not indeed. The operations of our house are tremendous, 
 but they are equalled by the calls made upon us." 
 
 " There, that will do. And how about the surplus ? But we 
 won't be hard upon you. Our cheque we must have, because we 
 want it ; but Eiloe and Co. will undertake to satisfy all outstand- 
 ing calls against young Hopeful, and get in all the stamped paper 
 from all the tribes of Israel, lost ones and all, for ten shillings in 
 the pound paid down." 
 
 " If I accede to this, will you do me one favour ? " 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 ^' jS'ot to lend William any more money."
 
 16G THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 "Tes," replied Mr. Sims, very slowly and drily. "I think I 
 can promise that the captain won't get another shilling from Eilos 
 and Co. until we see our way a great deal more clearly. Do you 
 know, Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, that I'm not quite so well satisfied 
 with the security as I was an hour ago ? I begin to be of your 
 opinion, that money is much in demand and very hard to get ; and 
 that although the operations of your house are tremendous, they 
 are equalled by the calls made upon it. Is there any tangible 
 surplus. Sir J. ? " The richest man in London moved uneasily in 
 his chair, and a faint flush overspread his pallid cheek. 
 
 " You shall have your cheque," he said with an effort, 
 " and I will give you authority to compound with my son's 
 creditors." 
 
 " I ask you ' eye,' and you answer ' elbow,' " Mr. Sims con- 
 tinued. "But let that pass. We have settled the captain's little 
 business, and relieved i^iloe and Co. from the painful necessity of 
 issuing twenty-eight Victorias by the grace of, at two pounds 
 fourteen each, commanding William Groldthorpe to put in an 
 appearance before Fred. Pollock at Westminster. Now about 
 your own concerns. May I ask to what I am indebted for the 
 pleasure of et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and how the deuce you 
 came to stumble across me and Coger's Inn ?" 
 
 " She sent me here." 
 
 " Clever little minx, I dare say she did. And what was I 
 to do?" 
 
 " In an interview I had with her only yesterday, I begged, I 
 implored, I almost went on my knees to her to name a sum for 
 which she would consent to resign those fatal papers." 
 
 " What fatal papers ? " 
 
 " Oh, Desborough, Desborough, you know too well." 
 
 " Upon my word. Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, I don't ; and I can't 
 see what any papers, fatal or otherwise, have to do with your visit 
 to me." 
 
 " She said that she could do nothing without your sanction. 
 She implied that you were a participator in the se.cret which is 
 the curse and agony of my life. She resisted my entreaties, my 
 supplications, my offers, always on the plea of being unable to 
 act without you. And finally, saying that you might prove
 
 EMBARRASSMENTS OF A E,1CH YOUNG MAN. 167 
 
 tractable, she bade me come to you, and told me where to find 
 you." 
 
 " I declare that were you to give me fifty thousand pounds, I 
 couldn't help you," Sims replied, with a very disturbed and puzzled 
 expression of countenance. " It seems to me that she has been 
 making fools of both of us. She was always good at lying," 
 muttered Mr. Piloe Sims to himself, "and this is decidedly an 
 elephantine lie. I'm too fond of money," he continued to the 
 baronet, " to refuse a good offer if I've anything to sell ; but I 
 don't happen to be in partnership with Mrs. A. in this particular 
 instance." 
 
 He was speaking with perfect frankness. Mr. Sims never told 
 untruths when mendacity was unnecessary. Mrs. Armytage lied 
 from predilection. There are some people who will lie about the 
 day of the week and the time of the day. Sims had taken a com- 
 prehensive view of the situation. He saw there was nothing to be 
 gained by deceiving Sir Jasper Goldtliorpe on this point, and was 
 for that reason quite candid and truthful. 
 
 " Then, you know nothing ? " the baronet asked, but not in a 
 relieved tone, as though he would rather have been in the power of 
 Mr. Sims, than in that of Mrs. Armytage. 
 
 " Kothing beyond a general impression that our lively little 
 friend has a hold over you, by which she manages to extract about 
 two thousand a year from Beryl Court. Do you receive her rents 
 for her, or are you the agent for her late husband's pension ? " 
 
 Sir Jasper moved towards the door. 
 
 " I must try again," he murmured. '-The continuance of this 
 thraldom will either kill or drive me mad." 
 
 " Nay," said Mr. Sims, " though I know nothing at present, 
 there is no reason why I shouldn't screw all that is to be known 
 out of our captivating acquaintance. If she has a hold over you, 
 I have a hold over her." 
 
 " And I one, and no light hold, over you, Desborough," Sir 
 Jasper interposed in a low, sad voice. 
 
 "And so we all hold, and may all hang together," gaily 
 responded Mr. Sims, with a shorb dry laugh, and positively 
 snapping his fingers. " A hold over me, bah ! I defy you. Kot 
 all the oaths of all the witnesses, true and perjured in the world,
 
 108 THE SEVKN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 could make me out to be Hugli Desborough. To those I choose 
 I am Sims, to others Filoe. I may call myself Sardanapalus, or 
 Tippoo Saib, if I like ; but Hugh Desborough I never can and 
 never will be. He is a dead man, dead and buried, and I have 
 come into his property." 
 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe looked at this mean, grey, ill-favoured 
 little man, with his rogue's face and shabby raiment, and his 
 thoughts rolled back long years. He was among the twenties, 
 and saw himself humble and struggling behind a country-shop 
 counter, his wife in the back parlour nursing a baby boy. He 
 saw the man, who, in despite of truth and knowledge, he was to 
 call Filoe, not Desborough, young, natty, spruce, rosy — a jaunty 
 little man in a white hat, blue 'coat, yellow waistcoat, stocking-net 
 pantaloons, and Hessian boots — a merry little man, fond of his 
 bottle of port, his rubber of whist, and his Anacreontic song, 
 which he piped in a chirping voice when business-hours were over. 
 Tes, there was the shop, his little boy playing with the brooms, 
 and brushes, and fagots of wood; at the door; his wife in the 
 back parlour nursing a baby. He saw, in the lazy summer after- 
 noon, the jaunty little man coming across the high street. His 
 blue shadow fell across the threshold. Anon he was in the shop, 
 and spoke him cheeringly but decisively. Por the little man was 
 his superior, and had authority over him. There was a talk 
 about a lottery-ticket. Six of "thirty thousand pounds," "the 
 last lottery ever to be drawu." " Bish, contractor," jangled in 
 bis ears like chimes. And the little man changed ; ah, how he 
 changed ! and he saw himself change no less. He was on a jury. 
 The little man in soiled and sordid raiment, stood in a wooden pen 
 in a hot crowded room ; an inverted mirror over his head, a man 
 with keys behind, rue on the ledge before him. Guilty, Death. 
 It was a banker's prosecution — a private banker's, a Quaker firm, 
 luckily. The quiet Friends were always averse to capital punish- 
 ment. " Guilty, Death;" and he saw a ship slowly working out 
 of dock, the men at the capstan crooning forth their dull song, 
 the soldier with his bright bayonet standing over the hatchway 
 where the exiles lay fettered. Hugh Desborough was dead 
 indeed. His name was written in the midst of the great Pacific 
 wave, and a great golden rock rolled across Sir Jasper Gold-
 
 EMBAllRASSMENTS OF A HIGH YOUNG MAN. 1G9 
 
 thorpe's field of vision, and left him face to face with Piloe and 
 Co. composedly grinning. 
 
 " There is nothing more," Sir Jasper said, with a deep, deep 
 sigh. 
 
 " But one word." Mr. Sims placed himself in front of Mam- 
 mon. He had the audacity to take him by the lapels of that 
 revered frock-coat, to look him full in the eyes, to draw him 
 towards as much light as would pass through the murky window- 
 pane. 
 
 " See here," said Mr. Sims, very softly, almost kindly. " We 
 are very old acquaintances, and have each seen our ups and downs, 
 though business makes a gulf between us as Avide as Chelsea 
 Eeach. Is all right with you ? Is Beryl Court really built of 
 gold, or is it only straw and stamped paper ? Be frank. Ton 
 are the most specious, but yet the duller rascal of the two. You 
 may deceive yourself. I never do, save when I back the red or 
 take the box in my hand. Are you going to the bad ?" 
 
 " The reputation of my house," — Sir Jasper began in his grave 
 plodding voice. 
 
 " May become so much infamy to-morrow. If you were to lay 
 me down fifty thousand pounds in gold on that table, you might 
 be still on the very eve of a Smash. I can understand when a man's 
 head gets muddled with millions. If you are ruined, of course the 
 ruin will be of the most splendid description. Come, speak out." 
 
 The baronet looked round for his hat, and muttered something 
 about a cheque awaiting the pleasure of Filoe and Co. 
 
 " I suppose I must let you go your own gate," observed Mr. 
 Sims, releasing his hold on Sir Jasper's lapels, and thrusting his 
 hand into his pocket again. " AVe have touched for a moment, 
 and must now fly asunder farther than ever. Don't come here 
 any more. It won't do you any good. It may be part of my 
 subsequent duty to assist in smashing you. Keep your promise 
 to Filoe and Co., and they'll let you be ; if not, they will be 
 compelled to do you a mischief." 
 
 " You will remember old times, Des — Filoe." 
 
 " I shall remember nothing," Mr. Sims tartly replied, " but 
 business. Let us trust that our mutual business transactions 
 won't bring us into collision. I say again that Desborough is
 
 170 THE SEVEX SONS OF :\rAMMON. 
 
 dead, and tliat the ghosts of Townsend or Euthven, tlie Bow 
 Street runners, couldn't identify him. Gro, and return no more. 
 If you had spoken to me frankly, I might have forgotten the 
 ■wrong you once did me, and helped you. I have no means of 
 judging, but I can swear you need help." 
 
 " I do indeed, in one instance — that of the woman who tortures 
 me." 
 
 " What, of little Florence, little Flo ? She is useful to me ; but 
 you have still my full leave to poison her, or have her kidnapped 
 and locked up in a coal cellar for life. I shall be obliged to do 
 something of the same sort myself; for, do you know, my good 
 sir, her Impulse makes her dangerous." 
 
 He had his hand on the door, and was about to open it. 
 
 " Eemember," he said, " you are doing wrong. This is the last 
 time of asking. As you knew me once, I am now — a common 
 swindler and cheat. But I have means, aha ! I have means. The 
 mouse might help the lion. Coger's Inn might come to the aid of 
 Beryl Court with benefit to both parties. Once more, have you 
 anything to say? " 
 
 " Nothing, nothing," Sir Jasper falteringly made answer; and 
 he was given over to Bufialinacco the Ruthless, and conducted out 
 of Coger's Castle. 
 
 " Go," said Mr. Sims, apostrophising a cupboard in default of 
 his late visitor. " Go to your clerks, your slaves, and your toadies; 
 go, till the smash comes. "What a smash it will be ! I might have 
 disentangled the web. I should like to be the bosom friend at 
 Beryl Court. But it's too late, evidently ; and he's far too deeply 
 dipped. This makes the second of my acquaintances who have 
 Smash written in their way-bills. The little woman must go. 
 There is no help for it. Her Impulse grows stronger and 
 stronger." 
 
 He became aware of the presence of a fragment of biscuit on 
 the window-sill, and, pouncing upon it, devoured it with great 
 gusto. 
 
 " She's an artful little hussy, too," he thought, still munching. 
 " She's moved that heavy, senseless, spooney lubber away from 
 Hoogendracht. Tes ; the Lay Brother went away on the 10th of 
 May. Next "Wednesday is the 24th. She thought to spirit him
 
 EMBARRASSMENTS OF A RICH YOUNG MAN. 171 
 
 away from her Sims; aud here's a letter telling me that he's 
 safe and sound at Belleriport. A garde-cliiourme, aha! ^ garde- 
 cldourme. She doesn't give parties in the Eue Neuve for nothing. 
 Her influence with the maritime Prefect must be enormous. The 
 cldourme too. How fond she is of the old locality ! Memory 
 will bring back the feeling. Mori enfant, tu jiniras la, ou tu as 
 commended'' 
 
 May I be permitted to observe, that people who have passed 
 many years of their lives in a foreign country, thoroughly isolated 
 from the companionship of their own countrymen, frequently 
 express their thoughts in the language which they have been 
 accustomed to hear spoken. 
 
 "Buff"," said Mr. Sims, passing into the adjoining room, " here 
 are five sovereigns to pay for the usual postages and advertise- 
 ments. Twelve more insertions, on alternate days, for Professor 
 Merryscope, if you please. I shall not be here to-morrow. And 
 now," continued Mr. Sims, " I'll go and enjoy myself." 
 
 Mr. Sims's curriculum of enjoyment was peculiar. He took a 
 walk up Eegent Street, and passed into Piccadilly by the Bur- 
 lington Arcade, peering into a variety of shops for the display of 
 fashionable wares, and chuckling to think how many bills of sale 
 he held over those gay stocks-in-trade, and how many of the 
 dashing proprietors, male and female, he had under the thumb- 
 screw. Then he took a little walk in Hvde Park, and looked at 
 the distinguished personages on foot, on horseback, and in 
 hei'aldry-covered carriages, who owed Piloe and Co. money. Then 
 he had a nice little dinner at a sixpenny eating-house ; and then, 
 after a quiet tumbler at a tavern, of which the landlord was obse- 
 quiously polite to the customer who held his lease, his life-policy, 
 and his dock-warrants, Mr. Sims thought that he would go to the 
 play. He had paid his gold into a bank, and had a pocketful of 
 silver. He came back from the play about three o'clock in the 
 morning, very haggard, with bloodshot eyes, and with very nearly 
 three hundred pounds in gold and notes about him. 
 
 " AVhat's the good ? " he muttered, turning into a wretched 
 bed at a cofFee-shop in Long Acre — lie seldom slept twice in the 
 same place. " I lost a thousand the night before last."
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ]^ES. AEMTTAGE S IMPULSE. 
 
 Dear ladies, -who are good enougli to read this story, don't you 
 think that there is a great deal too much about money and not 
 half enough about love in its pages ? There has not been, posi- 
 tively, a scene of downright houest sweethearting in one single 
 chapter. Is it possible for that wicked and most objectionable 
 little persoB, Mrs. Armytage, to love any one ? Besides, who is 
 t\\e 'pretendii, who the soiq)ira7it ? What man has been fortunate or 
 luihappy enough to find a place in that cankered heart, deceitful 
 above all things, and desperatel_v wicked ? There is Miss Mag- 
 dalen Hill, too. She is rich, she is accomplished, she is pious ; 
 and she loses one lover by a railway-accident, and has another, a 
 clergyman, too, almost turned out of doors. And that rude 
 hoydeu, Miss Letitia Salusbury, is slie susceptible of the soft 
 pasbion ? When is the real love-making going to begin ? you 
 may ask, ladies. Why, even a little servants'-hall tendresse, 
 between Sir Jasper Goldthorpe's fifth footman and the scullery- 
 maid in Onyx Square, might alleviate the intolerable dreariness of 
 this history of money-bags, bills for discount, postage-stamps, 
 cheques, bank-notes, and naughty people who live in ugly places 
 and lend money at sixty per cent. Ladies, you must be just. If 
 you want love-making novels, Mr. Mudie will pile up your car- 
 riage-cushions with any amount of three-volume sentimentality. 
 If you require theological novels about High Church, Low Church, 
 Eroad Church, or no Church at all, the circulating libraries and 
 the railway book-stalls will meet your every wish. How am I to 
 write about Love, of which I know nothing, and never did know 
 aught that would bear the dwelling upon ? You seek the placid 
 lake, the green boughs, the birds singing in the calm sky of afiec- 
 tion. I have been far out to sea, and can only discourse of
 
 MRS. ARMYTAGE's IMPULSE. 173 
 
 howling waves and inky clouds, of jagged rocks and drifting spars 
 of wreck, of storm-birds hovering over the foam, and bunches of 
 tangled seaweed floating Heaven knows whither. This story is 
 not about the Seven Sons of Yenus, could Cupid so multiply him- 
 self. It is called the Seven Sons of Mammon. It treats of the 
 low and squalid, the sordid and the base, of dross-getting and 
 dross-spending ; it tells of the good and evil that by money may 
 be wrought. I asked in the outset if gold were a chimera, and 
 denied the postulate. For gold gives us power and scorn, and the 
 accomplishnient of desire, and the working-out of long-nursed 
 hatreds and revenges ; and by gold in Mammon and Mammon in 
 gold this book must stand or fall. 
 
 And you, good gentlemen, have you not a crow to pluck with 
 me, for that I have hut as yet introduced you to three of 
 Mammon's seven sons ? One of them dead and buried, too, at 
 Kensal Green. Have patience : let the months and years roll on, 
 There is time enough for the sailor to come home from sea, for 
 the Eton boy to grow up to man's estate, for his two brothers to 
 make themselves a place in history. All this may take place in 
 the twelfth volume or thereabouts of this work. There is time 
 enough for the very de|id to — but enough : I must attend to the 
 affairs of the living. 
 
 Mrs. Armytage, for instance, was as lively as the liveliest of 
 kittens, when, the cheque of Filoe and Co. in her porte-monnaie^ 
 she trotted down the crazy stairs of Coger's Inn. She was an 
 ephemeral creature. She hoped and feared, sorrowed and joyed, 
 but for the moment. She was an April in flounces and crinoline, 
 and the sunshine far predominated over the showers. AVhen a 
 storm did come, it was short, but sharp. 
 
 In the shameful old courtyard of Coger's Inn her brougham 
 was waiting. Have you observed how partial the little woman 
 was to riding about ? She seldom walked. People whose life is 
 one criminal hurry are obliged to ride. Somebody else was in 
 waiting, too, being no other than Mr. Tigg's man, who — being 
 well aware of the ins and outs of Coger's Inn, and so well per- 
 suaded that, unless Mrs. Armytage threw herself out of a window, 
 or took up her permanent abode in one of the sets of chambers, 
 she must necessarily come out by the same door by which she had
 
 ] 74 THE SEVEN" SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 entered — was basking in the sun, \\-bicli made him look very 
 dusty, and lit up his greasy hat and coat-collar with golden flakes. 
 He had been amusing himself by chewing the end of a lucifer- 
 match with great apparent relish. Mr. Tigg's man was youthful, 
 and a highly disagreeable young man he was, both to sight and 
 to smell, to say nothing of hearing. Why his hat was much too 
 large for him, and was worn, at the back of his head ; why his coat 
 was too long, and his trousers too short, and his boots too big ; why 
 he should dangle one hideous Berlin glove, which, in antedilu- 
 vian times, may have been white, and which had not the remotest 
 reference to a fellow ; why he should have strings and pins where 
 buttons should have been ; why no vestige of under-linen should 
 have been perceptible about him, save and except only one striped 
 sock, which flapped idly over one unlaced high-low ; why his blue 
 cotton pocket-handkerchief should have been deposited in his hat, 
 allowing one small triangle of clouded cerulean to brand his pasty 
 brow ; why the mud, seemingly of last summer, should have 
 encrusted his lower extremities ; why the grease of the year 
 before last slashed his jerkin and pinked his sleeves, and the 
 patches of perhaps the last century spotted him over, as though 
 he had made his coat from a particoloured counterpane, or had 
 been a harlequin, fallen upon evil days, and into a gutter ; — all 
 these were matters between the young man, his tailor, and his 
 conscience. His chewing the ends of lucifer-matches might like- 
 wise be looked upon as an idiosyncracy. The continual blinking 
 of his lashless eyelids, and the occasional spasmodic twitch of his 
 limbs, which gave him the appearance of a clumsy pupil in St. 
 Yitus's school, who had failed even to master his Dance to perfec- 
 tion, might be put down to the score of natural infirmities. JS'or 
 could he help his large ears, his wide and idiotically simpering 
 mouth, his beardless chin and cheeks, his scant hair, which had 
 been apparently half-singed off, while the other moiety had been 
 eut with a knife and fork, and his many pimples. But he was a 
 slovenly young man, for soap and water are cheap : there was 
 even a pump in Coger's Inn, and washing would have done him 
 no harm, and made his purse none the leaner. And he was an 
 inconsistent young man ; for while in the aggregate he looked 
 like a. beggar, he quite dissipated any notion of pauperism that
 
 jiE^. ahmytage's impulse. 175 
 
 may have been formed respecting him, first by vrearing in his foul 
 old stock a diamond brooch of great brilliance, and next by 
 allowing a golden chain of massive form and curious workmanship 
 to meander over the breast of his exceedingly ragged waistcoat. 
 This young man might have been about twenty-three years of age. 
 There hung about him a mingled and decidedly unpleasant odour, in 
 which a chandler's shop, a tobacconist's, and a tap-room contended 
 for preeminence ; and he had a voice which reminded you at once 
 of a person naturally gruff, and with a cold in his head besides, 
 whispering down a gutta-percha tube. The young man's name 
 was ileuben. 
 
 " A pretty cavalier, upon my word, to ride with," quoth Mrs. 
 Armytage, shaking her sunny ringlets. " And that diamond 
 must be worth a hundred and fifty pounds, if its worth a penny. 
 If you please, sir," she continued, — as a pleasant compromise 
 between "wretch" and "fellow," — "everything is settled, and 
 we will go back to Mr. Tigg's, if you please." 
 
 " Ham Hi," asked the young man, "to go hinside, or ham Hi 
 to go hout ? Thof a foUerer, Hi ham a gent, and 'av moved 
 among the very fust." 
 
 The fact is, that the young man had ridden all the way from 
 StockweU on the box of the brougham, and the driver had in no 
 qualified terms imparted to him his opinion that pumping on first, 
 and rubbing down with a bath-brick afterwards, were about the 
 best remedies for his complaint. 
 
 " Hi ham respected," continued the young man, evidently 
 much hurt in his feelings, " hiu the 'all an' bin the robin' room. 
 Hi ham well known at jidge's chambers. Ham Hi to go hinside, 
 or ham Hi to go hout ? " 
 
 If the young man's face had not been of the precise hue of cold 
 boiled veal, it might have been likened to an aitchbone of beef, so 
 full of h's in the wrong place was he. 
 
 Mrs. Armytage was in an excellent temper. " You had better 
 get inside, I think," she said. " I'm sure I didn't mean to offend 
 you. "Will you drive back to the same place, if you please ? " she 
 added to the coachman. 
 
 "I'm glad it's inside this time," grumbled the charioteer; 
 " I'll be danged if I drive over "Westminster Bridge again with
 
 176 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 that scarecrow by the side of me." The brougham was only a 
 hired one ; and the man thought, ifc may be presumed, that he had 
 a right to be impertinent. 
 
 "If you would be kind enough, sir," suggested Mrs. Army- 
 tage, " to sit as far away on that side " — indicating the one oppo- 
 site to her — "as you can; and if you'd just pull the window 
 down: and, — yes, thank you, if you wouldn't mind my — it's so 
 very refreshing this warm weather." 
 
 On hearing the two magic syllables "refresh," the dull eye of 
 the young man brightened up, and he grinned fawningly. But 
 on the word terminating with " ing " instead of " ment," the eye 
 subsided into fishy gloom, and the young man's mouth relapsed 
 into its normal expression of hopeless vacancy; while Mrs. 
 Armytage proceeded to sprinkle herself with eau de Cologne. 
 
 " May I ask," the conversational little lady proceeded, with 
 unabated politeness, " how you employ yourself generally ? " 
 
 "Hi follers 'em habout," was the reply of the young man. 
 
 " Whom did you say you were good enough to follow ? " 
 
 " Father's customers. Them has 'es down hupon, sich as you - 
 and Hi follers them as 'as to be took." 
 
 " Took ? " 
 
 " Capture. Middlesex and Surrey to wit. Capias," explained 
 the young man, with as many nods as words. " Hi follers ; and. 
 hif they means boltiu', Hi 'angs hon. Hi oughter for to take 
 myself. Hi oughter, but Hi aint luckv. Father says Hi'm a 
 fool." 
 
 " I wish your papa would get a new tailor for you, and wouldn't 
 let you smoke such strong tobacco/' thought Mrs. Armytage. 
 
 " Hi oughter," continued the young man, a deep sense of injury 
 in his tone, " to be 'igh hup in the lor. Hif not a hofficer, ban 
 attorney. My brother's one, and lives bin Gray's Hinn. 'E's a 
 swell, and Hi'm holder than 'im, but Hi'm honly Mr. Tigg's little 
 boy." 
 
 "Dear me," murmured ]\fr3. Armytage sympathisingly, and 
 gazing at the victim of parental partiality through her eye-glass. 
 
 "Hit's cos Hi haint a scoller." proceeded the aggrieved young 
 man. "Hi wenter school, and Hi couldn't fix the words. The 
 master 'amraered me and Hi 'owled. The more Hi 'owled, the
 
 MRS. AUMYTAGE's IMPULSE. 177 
 
 more 'e 'ammered me. Hit was 'ammerin and 'owlin, 'owlin and 
 'ammerin all day long ; but Hi never could fix them \yords ; and 
 Hi'm houly good forter serve writs, and swear affdavitches, and 
 foller parties habout." 
 
 He sanlc into moody silence after this affecting narrative, and 
 chewed the cud of sweet and bitter fancies — and another lucifer- 
 mateh — during the remainder of the journey. 
 
 Mrs. Armytage thought of a thousand things ; — of some that 
 made her eyes glisten, of others that darkened her fair face, and 
 stamped a tiny little horseshoe — but only for a moment — between 
 her brows. And ever and anon she opened her portemonnaie, and 
 glanced triumphantly at a little bit of grey paper that lay neatly 
 folded in a compartment by itself; and if, graceless little body, 
 she could invoke a blessing upon anything, she must have blessed 
 her lucky stars at the sight of that same grey paper. 
 
 The residence of Mr. Ephraim Tisjs: was in Badger Lane, a 
 portion of the charming suburb of Stockwell which, has not yet 
 become susceptible to the influence of metropolitan improvements. 
 On a mouldy zinc plate, from whose sunken letters the black 
 annealing had craclced away, Mr. Tigg called himself an auctioneer, 
 estate-agent, appraiser, and upholder. Those who were familiar 
 witb the business he carried on might have opined that casting 
 •down was much more his province than holding up ; but, at any 
 rate, it would have been more consistent with the announcement 
 on his door-plate if 3Ir. Tigg had occupied himself a little with 
 upholding his own residence, which had the craziest and most 
 dilapidated appearance. The nucleus of this tenement had, to all 
 seeming, been originally a showman's van; the wheels being 
 removed to insure a firm foundation. This cor])s de logis had two 
 wings, one in the guise of a washhouse, and the other in that of a 
 parochial cage in a country town. Behind, ^something like a 
 ruined brick-kiln struggled for architectural ascendancy with a 
 barn. Before the place stretched by way of lawn a model, on a 
 diminutive scale, of the great Desert of Sahara, with one oasis in 
 the shape of a boot, much worn, which had perhaps slipped from 
 some angry wayfarer, who had shaken ^the^dust ofi" his feet ou 
 leaving Mr. Tigg's premises. The whole was fenced about with 
 rusty spear-headed rails, pointing in various directions, as though
 
 178 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 the sheriff of Surrey had buried a posse of javelin-men beneath., 
 and their imprisoned ghosts were piercing the earth with lethal 
 weapons. There were plenty of flower-pots about, likewise saucers, 
 generally broken ; and a plentiful supply of mould, but not any 
 flowers. The place was called Paradise Cottage. This name was 
 displayed on a black board gibbeted between two poles, looking 
 very much like one that had served for conveyance of announce- 
 ments that rubbish might here be shot. The satirical artists 
 among the neighbouring youth had also made it a medium for the 
 display of cartoous in chalk, representing a personage of monstrous 
 mien, presumedly the proprietor of Paradise Cottage, suspended 
 from a gallows, and smoking a pipe meanwhile. He was likewise 
 shown as sellins: himself for a bag labelled " 2s. 6J." to a dreadful 
 creature with horns, hoofs, and a tail, and who might reasonably 
 be supposed to be the Enemy of Mankind. These drawings were 
 accompanied by insulting legends, generally assuming an interro- 
 gative form, and inquiring whether Mr. Tigg was the person who 
 skinned the flea for the hide and fat, and who made beef-tea out of 
 paving-stones. 
 
 Badger Lane did not seem precisely the locality for carriages ; 
 but as Mrs. Armytage's brougham drove towards Paradise Cot- 
 tage, the way was found to be stopped by a very splendid mail- 
 phaeton, with two very splendid and champing grey horses, 
 splendidly harnessed. The fittings of the vehicle — silver-mounted 
 lamps, tiger-skin rugs, morocco cushions — were on an equal scale 
 of splendour; and behind was a solemn groom in a blue-and-silver 
 livery, who sat with his arms folded, mute and contemplative, as 
 though he were twin brother to the Emperor Napoleon, brought 
 by the exigences of fortune down to the service of a livery-stable, 
 instead of St. Helena. 
 
 The proprietor of all this splendour was absolutely sumptuous. 
 He stood in the midst of the Desert of Sahara talking to Mr. 
 Tigg. He was a fat gentleman ; and with his vast abdomen and 
 pursy cheeks, but sallow complexion, and black beard and ringlets, 
 quite fulfilled the idea of an Oriental Alderman. He glittered 
 very much with chains, rings, and brooches, and he had a very 
 large cigar, at which he drew with such vigour and persistence, 
 that you might have thought it was his slave, and that he was
 
 MRS. AUMYTAGE's IMPULSE. 179 
 
 determined to have a good day's work out of it. And the fat 
 gentleman bad very yellow gloves, and smelt very strongly of 
 musk. 
 
 " Tou won't, then, you won't come to terms," the fat gentleman 
 said, loud enough for Mrs. Armytage to hear, as, finding the narrow 
 lane blocked, she cheerfully descended from her brougham ; " you 
 won't take nineteen and seveupence in the pound! You're wrong, 
 Mr. Tigg ; upon my life and word and honour, now, you're wrong 
 indeed." 
 
 " I wouldn't take nineteen and ninepence — I wouldn't take 
 nineteen and elevenpence threefarthings — there ! " Mr. Tigg made 
 answer. 
 
 "Then you're wrong," pursued the fat gentleman; "you're 
 wrong, my dear friend; bless you, and good-bye. Bless you — ." 
 He was forced to make his sentences short, the cigar entailine: 
 much expenditure of respiration. " When will you come and 
 dine ? "' 
 
 " I never come and dine," replied Mr. Tiffs:. ' 
 
 " Come and dine in the Eegency Park, A\''hy don't you live in 
 the Eegency Park, instead of in this mousetrap ? " 
 
 "We have all our diflerent ways of enjoying life," Mr. Tigg 
 observed sententiously. 
 
 " Trvdy so, truly so, my dear friend," went on the fat gentleman, 
 still puffing. " 1 like to enjoy myself. You like to live in a dog- 
 kennel. Good-bye, and bless you. Stop," he said, as though a 
 novel idea had struck him, "perhaps you prefer to lock up in 
 Surrey ? " 
 
 " Maybe." 
 
 "Ah, there's something in that — something in that. By the 
 way, will you go halves in another five hundred at three months 
 for young Goldthorpe ? " 
 
 " Hush ! " cried Mr. Tigg ; " don't mention names out of doors. 
 Don't you see there's somebody coming ? " 
 
 He pointed to Mrs. Armytage and the young man Eeuben, who 
 were just then at the hingeless gate which gave entrance to the 
 Great Desert of Sahara. 
 
 The fat and splendid gentleman glanced over hiB shoulder, and 
 took instantaneous stock of the new arrival. Badger Lane was 
 
 N 2
 
 80 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 scarcely an appropriate place wherein to discuss the merits of the 
 lyric drama, but he immediately began to talk about the Italian 
 Opera. He mentioned Persiani at once, and took leave of Mr. Tigg 
 with a reference to the Sonnamhula. He could not shake hands with 
 Mr. Tigg, however ; for the sufficient reason that his host leaned 
 habitually on two crutch-sticks ; but he blessed him a great many 
 times, and, removing the cigar from his lips to hum an air from 
 Norma, mounted into his chariot of state. The brougham had 
 backed out of Badger Lane, and the fat gentleman in his mail- 
 phaeton had it all his own way. 
 
 " Where have I met that woman before ? " he said reflectively, 
 as he drove into the high-road. " One doesn't see that grin and 
 those curls twice in a life." 
 
 Mr. Tigg was delighted to see Mrs. Armytage, and in his joy 
 positively gave his boy Eeuben a shilling. It is remarkable that 
 a very few minutes afterwards the pungent odour of the very 
 strongest tobacco pervaded the dwelling of Mr. Tigg. Nature is, 
 after all, but an aggregate of systems of compensation ; and while 
 Ephraim Tigg hardened his heart with usury, his son Eeuben 
 softened his brain with coarse tobacco and a short pipe. 
 
 The fumes of this calumet made Mrs. Armytage cough a little 
 even in the kitchen, where she sat with Mr. Tigg. Eor it was on 
 the basement floor, and in the apartment ordinarily devoted to 
 culinary purposes, that the Stockwell Rasper elected to dwell. A 
 lean and liungry cat with admirably defined ribs kept him com- 
 pany, while the young man Eeuben smoked his pipe above stairs, 
 until required to follow people about. The furniture of Mr. 
 Tigg's kitchen was eccentric. There were plenty of dish-covers, 
 but no dishes, and not a scrap of anything eatable to put in them, 
 if dishes there had been. The place of a larder was supplied by 
 a very large iron safe, and that of a dresser by a nest of drawers 
 and pigeon-holes. The huge hobs of the kitchen-range were 
 covered with a neat assortment of ink-bottles past service, and 
 the open oven and plate-warmer appeared to contain newspapers. 
 A common kitchen-table was littered with files of documents. A 
 hanging shelf contained Mr. Tigg's library : to wit, a Post-Office 
 Directory, a Peerage and Baronetage, an Army List, a Navy List, 
 a Clergy List, a Law List, and a Eaciug Calendai', — all books
 
 MRS. aumytage's ijipulse. IBl 
 
 essential to the due carrying on of Mr. Tigg's vocation. Eemote 
 as was his residence from the abodes of wealth and the haunts of 
 fashion, peers, baronets, members of the House of Commons, 
 officers of the household cavalry and of her Majesty's navy, sages 
 of the law, and dignitaries of the Church, had travelled to Stock- 
 well, and sat in that squalid kitchen, and sometimes trembled 
 before its master, as they vainly pleaded for "time." For when 
 the mountain lends monev, and Mahomet wants monev, he must 
 needs go to the mountain. 
 
 Eegarding Mr. Ephraim Tigg himself, it may be a tenable 
 theory to assume that this eminent Rasper chose to live in a 
 kitchen, either through a fellow feeling for the rats which infested 
 it, or else in salutary memory that it was somewhat nearer to 
 that grave to which he seemed destined at no distant date to 
 descend. 
 
 Whether he had attained the age of one hundred years, or was 
 a, few years short of the century, must remain a moot-point. On 
 the principle of extremes meeting, he was a very Hercules of infir- 
 mities. His head was quite bald ; and, more for use than orna- 
 ment, there was perched on the crown thereof a black skull-cap 
 of threadbare cotton velvet. The wags of his craft declared that 
 he had lost all his teeth in gnawing up a certain great bankrupt's 
 estate in the year 1825. He was slightly paralytic on one side of 
 his face, and in one arm, and so lurched at you when he lent you 
 money, or sued you for the triple of that which he had lent. His 
 legs and feet were thickly bandaged up ; so were his hands, mucli 
 afHicted with challistones. He walked, or hobbled, or limped, or 
 lurched, as has been before mentioned, by the aid of two crutch- 
 sticks. He wore a filthy, old, grey flannel dressing-gown, closely 
 buttoned up. A yellow string that hung down from his throat, 
 and belonging probably to his night-shirt, and a pair of misshapen 
 slippers that had once been of red leather, marked what remain- 
 ing sacrifices he had made to the Graces. 
 
 Mrs. Armytage knew his person and peculiarities by heart, and 
 his appearance was scarcely repulsive to her. Indeed, she once 
 said that he had a helle tete de morf. She chose the least rickety 
 of the two wretched chairs the kitchen contained, opened her porte- 
 monnaie, took out the slip of grey paper, unfolded it, and dis-
 
 182 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 played the clieque bearing the signature of Piloe and Co. to the 
 eves of the Easper. 
 
 He received it very philosophically, seeming neither pleased nor 
 displeased, but carefully scanning the signature and the private 
 mark, and mumbling to himself meanwhile. 
 
 "It's righteous, mum," he said, "it's righteous. A many and 
 a many of Filoe's cheques I've seen. Deara, deara me, the little 
 tricks he used to be up to. It was his custom, mum, always to 
 stop the payment of the cheques he drew. Tou went to the 
 bank and couldn't get 'em cashed, or paid 'em in and they was 
 refused. Then you went back to him in a rage, and he said he 
 was very sorry, and gave you another cheque, which was to 
 be as right as ninepence, — he'd made a little error in his 
 balance, he said then ; and deara, deara me, you used to get 
 the money, and Filoe and Co. used to get sometimes twenty- 
 four hours', and sometimes forty-eight hours' more profit on 
 their little balances. Ah ! but he wouldn't serve poor old Ephy 
 such a trick." 
 
 Mrs. Armytage listened with amused composure to this anec- 
 dote of Messrs. Tiloe's ingenuity. 
 
 "Tou wouldn't take my check," she remarked, "although you 
 seem glad enough to accept one from a person who, it appears, 
 was in the habit of cheating those with whom he dealt. Tou are 
 a strange old man. Will you be good enough to give me back 
 that — that paper, now you have the money ? " 
 
 "In a moment, in a moment, mum," answered the Hasper. 
 " It's up-stairs — I'll fetch it directly ; but I'm very lame to-day. 
 and very short of breath. Won't you have a glass of sherry wine 
 and a sweet cake now you are here, mum ? " 
 
 Once, in the earlier days of her acquaintance with the Rasper, 
 and feeling exceedingly faint, Mrs. Armytage had been tempted 
 to accept such an invitation. Preserving, however, a lively 
 remembrance of the dreadful dregs, and of the apparently calca- 
 reous fragments powdered with grit, of which she had partaken on 
 that occasion, she declined the hospitable offer with an outward 
 smile and an inward shudder. 
 
 " And how did you get along with my little boy ? " the Easper 
 asked, tottering backwards and forwards, either in quest of some-
 
 MRS. AUMYTAGe's IMPULSE. 183 
 
 tiling, or being anxious to obtain delay. " IIow did young 
 Eeuben behave, mum ? " 
 
 "Ugh!" exclaimed the little woman, with profound disgust; 
 " the wretch ! " 
 
 " I know he isn't popular," his papa, with a leer, went on. 
 <' Eeuben's eccentric — he's peculiar. He's a character, mum." 
 
 " So it seems," remarked Mrs. Armytage drilj. 
 
 "I gi'ant he's a fool at his book learning," resumed the fond 
 parent. " I never could get him to be articled, nor nothing of 
 that sort ; but he's as sharp, mum — he's as sharp as a ne exeat. 
 He's made his little pickings, too, poor fellow, out of his pocket- 
 money, and what he's got from the gentlefolks he's followed." 
 
 " He won't get any pickings out of rae," was the mental resolve 
 of Mrs. Armytage. 
 
 " You'd scarcely believe it, mura," the Easper went on, dilating 
 with the congenial theme, " that my boy, young as he is, has got 
 houses — houses of his own, mum — in the thickest part of the Old 
 Kent Eoad." 
 
 " Woe betide his tenants!" was the observation of the little 
 lady. 
 
 " Ah, woe betide 'em, indeed, if they don't pay. Sharp's the 
 word with my Eeuben; and Monday's his selling-up day regular. 
 That boy will put the brokers in to the most obstroperous tenant 
 as clean as a whistle, as quick as lightning, and as welcome as the 
 flowers in May." 
 
 Mrs. Armytage bowed her head in mute acknowledgment of 
 the talents of the younger Easper, and the force and justice of 
 his father's similes. 
 
 " The way he took an Arabian bedstead worth at least two-ten, 
 and with a real feather-bed, from under a case of Fever, and had 
 it smoked in the back yard with sulphur and mahogany-shavings, 
 that it might go quite sound and healthy to the sheriff's sale, was 
 grand — grand and noble, mum. Think of the courage of the 
 thing. It reminded a friend of mine of the conduct of Boney- 
 partey at the bridge of Waterloo." 
 
 The bridge of Areola or Lodi might possibly have been men- 
 tioned by the Easper's friend in connection with the career of the 
 late Emperor of the Trench, but it did not matter: — decidedly
 
 184 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 not to Mrs. Armytage, who, yawning and drumming lier prettj 
 little fiDgers on the table, again requested Mr, Tigg to let her 
 have what she wanted, and allow her to depart. 
 
 " Directly, directly," he answered. " Bless us, what a hurry 
 we're in ! Sometimes we can stop by the hour together with old 
 Ephy. You won't have no sherry wine; you won't have no cake? 
 Don't you want a little accommodation ; a tiny little bit of some- 
 thing at three months at, oh ! so moderate a price. I'll renew, 
 mum, I'll always renew for you. Don't you want some prettj 
 article of jewellery to set off that charming little figure with ? 
 Say the word. Old Ephy's always ready to do business with you, 
 and bears no malice for any mistakes made." 
 
 She laughed scornfully, — was it at the compliment or at the 
 offer ? — but she bit her lips and turned her head away. She had 
 just then plenty of money at the banker's. 
 
 "Not to-day," she said; "don't tempt me, you wicked old 
 man. Go and fetch me the paper, and let me go." 
 
 "A little bracelet now, just a fifty-pun' note to buy sweet 
 scents with," the Easper persuasively continued, and leering at 
 her like a worn-out satyr in whom avarice had extinguished 
 desire. " Say the word, pretty Mrs. Armytage. Say the word. 
 Look here, and here, mum." 
 
 He had been pottering about since the conversation com- 
 menced, and, piece by piece, had brought out from his iron safe 
 a quantity of flat, oval, morocco cases. He opened them with 
 seeming carelessness, keeping her in conversation meanwhile. 
 She cast her eyes — she could not help it — on the glittering gems 
 as they lay in their nests of white satin. There were massiv® 
 bracelets and tiny trinkets of gold filagree ; there were big drop- 
 ear-rings of pearl ; there were necklaces of emerald and sapphire ; 
 there were rivieres of diamonds, serpents of diamonds, lockets 
 studded with diamonds, Lilliputian watches bristling with bril- 
 liants ; there were pencil-cases with amethyst tops, and even 
 snufi"-boxes and honbonnieres of gold and mosaic and enamel; ther© 
 were brooches and chatelaines of dull, heavy-looking, red gold, 
 all chased and bossed and graven ; and there were legions of 
 rings of every shape, of every size, that gleamed and glistened 
 with a fascinating shimmer from among the dingy old papers aa
 
 MRS. ARUYTAGE'S IMPULSE. 185 
 
 the kitcheu-table, like the eyes of so mauy ^vild beasts crouehiDg 
 ia their lair and waiting for their prey. 
 
 "Look at them," cried Ephraiui Tigg, his own old eyes 
 sparkling as he greedily contemplated all this treasure ; " look at 
 the pooty things ! xlin't they better than all the meat and drink 
 and fine clothes in the world ? Tlieij don't wear out, bless them. 
 Think of the pretty things they'll purchase. These real pearls 
 will buy coronets with sham ones round them. These diamonds 
 ■will bring the brightest eyes in England down to the poor old 
 beggarman's kitchen. They'll buy houses and lands, and honours 
 and friends. "When I die," quoth Ephraim Tigg, " I should like 
 to be buried in di'monds." 
 
 Mrs. Armytage gazed but for a minute or so. She resolutely 
 closed her eyes and clenched her hands, and once more entreated 
 Mr. Tigg to do her bidding. With many leers and whinings, and 
 much expatiating on the beauty and costliness of his wares — in 
 truth, they were superb — the Easper at length consented to totter 
 out of the room. AVith her eyes still closed, the woman heard 
 him clumping up-stairs with his crutch-sticks ; then, a lambent 
 flame in her face, and, presaging evil, she started up. 
 
 She, and the jewels, and her Impulse were together. She hung 
 over the table ; she touched and fondled the gems ; she tried now 
 one bracelet and now another on her arm. Her fingers fluttered 
 among the rings, and had a pretty palsy. She cursed because 
 there was no looking-glass. She clutched at necklaces. She 
 wounded her hands with the pins of brooches. Oh, but to have 
 one of them! "Take one," said Impulse. "Take one, Mrs. 
 x^rmytage," cried twenty thousand little fiends nestling in her 
 golden curls. She felt sick and dizzy. Her breath came short 
 and hot. Her heart leapt up to the bars of its cage, and her busy 
 fingers still went wandering, and wandering, and wandering 
 among the perilous stufi". 
 
 " AVhat can a poor little woman do with a parasol ? " she mut- 
 tered bitterly. " I can't strangle him with a cambric pocket- 
 handkerchief. Upon my word, it' I were a man, I'd brain liim 
 with one of his own crutches, and force my way out of the house 
 with all these things." 
 
 Just at this moment her Impulse whispered, " Look there —
 
 180 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMilON. 
 
 look at that book, Mrs. Arraytage ; that's safe enough." In lier 
 agitation, rearranging a necklace in its case, she had disturbed and 
 well-nigh thrown to the ground a portly folio volume. She knew 
 it well. It was Ephraim Tigg's cheque-book. How many times 
 had she seen and gloated over it ! No longitudinal pamphlet of 
 single cheques sufi&ced for the extended banking transactions of 
 the Easper. There were at least twenty on each page of the 
 folio volume. Mrs. Armytage looked upon them, and, in her 
 mind's eye, filled up the blanks between the graven forms with 
 sums and with signatures. But the writing she pictured to her- 
 self all seemed to be in red ink. Some two or three cheques had 
 already been cut from the page that lay open before her. The 
 cheques were on white paper ; the cuttings on the page 
 looked by no means conspicuous. Would the abstraction of one, 
 one little cheque only, be missed ? No longer twenty thousand 
 minor fiends among her curls, but the very Devil himself cried, 
 " Take it, woman ! be bold, and take it ! " 
 
 A sharp penknife lay invitingly near, when just the tiniest 
 creak in the world of the kitchen door alarmed her. It bad been 
 left half open. She looked up, and saw Ephraim Tigg of Stock- 
 well, the Rasper, through the aperture, leaning on his two crutch- 
 sticks and watching lier. 
 
 She caught his eye at once, and he hobbled in. "Aha!" he 
 said cunningly, " we have been travelling on Tom Tiddler's 
 ground I see. Pretty travelling, pretty travelling, isn't it ? " 
 
 She was confused, and dropped her veil, and yet in her inmost 
 heart was as thankful as one so fallen as she was could be, that for 
 once she had not obeyed the promptings of that Impulse of hers. 
 Ephraim Tigg swept in a moment the table with his hungry eye. 
 He saw that nothing was missing : — nor gem nor cheque. 
 
 There was one loose draught, however, and that he had 
 brought with him. It was similar in form to those in his book. 
 It was much crumpled, as though it had passed through many 
 hands. Was there not a big black word branded or stamped 
 across its face — a word that began with E ? The draft was for 
 two hundred pounds, and bore in the usual place of signature his 
 own name, Ephraim Tigg, or something very like it, appended 
 thereto. With never a word he handed it to Mrs. Armytage, who,
 
 MRS. AEMYTAGE's IMPULSE. 187 
 
 in equal silence, tore the document into minute fragments, and 
 thrust theia into her portemonnaie. She made the usurer a low 
 curtsey, laughed her little_ silver laugh, and was her own old 
 charming self again. 
 
 " Quitte pour cette fois^'' she murmured between her shining 
 teeth ; " but it has cost me a hundred pounds." 
 
 The Easper let her go, and when her skirts had ceased to 
 rustle in his hearing, sate down, and nursed one of his bandaged 
 legs. 
 
 "Not this 'time, but the next," he said, with a cunning smile. 
 " Not this time, but the next she surely will. The bird must be 
 caught : the pretty little song-bird must be caged and fed on Old 
 Bailer <rruusel," 
 
 Mrs. Armytage was unusually grave and meditative until the 
 brougham had brought her to the Middlesex side of Westminster 
 Bridge. She leant her cheek on her hand, and through her 
 clustering curls looked wistfully at the passing crowds who sped 
 about their several concernments, pure and honest ones mainly, it 
 is to be hoped, not errands of sin and death. She passed a girls' 
 charity-school, and Avondered to see how white the children's 
 caps and pinners and sleeves were ; how smooth and rosy their 
 faces. " I could do without diamonds if I were a charity-girl." 
 she thought. At the corner of the New Cut there was, as usual, 
 the great flaunting ragged crowd reeking of fried fish and vitriol. 
 " Is there any one among those wretches wickeder or more 
 miserable than I am ? " Mrs. Armytage asked herself. It was 
 late in the May afternoon, the sun danced on the river, which the 
 cloudless sky made blue against its will, hiding all the mud and 
 the corruption beneath. She saw the myriad panes in the Par- 
 liament House all twinkling in golden sparkles ; the sharp 
 crocketed pinnacles piercing the clear azure ; the long purple 
 shadow that the great tower cast upon the flood. She brightened 
 up herself now, perhaps in compliment to the House of Lords and 
 Commons, and by the time her brougham had entered Birdcage 
 "Walk was quite radiant, and had bowed, smiled, shaken her ring- 
 lets, and waved her finger-tips to at least a score of fashionable 
 acquaintances. 
 
 She was still a bird of passage, and had no house in London ;
 
 188 THE SETEN SONS OP JIAM3I0X. 
 
 but for the present was staying not in an liotel, but in grand fur- 
 nished lodgings close to Albert Gate, Knightsbridge. She dis- 
 missed the brougham at the door, and bade the driver go to the 
 stables and tell them to send round the horses. In a quarter of 
 an hour or so came a mounted groom, with a cockade in his hat, 
 — had not her late husband military rank ? — leading her own 
 saddle-horse, an exquisitely-formed and satin-skinned chesnut. 
 And forth came Mrs. Armytage, in the most graceful of riding- 
 habits and the tightest-fitting of riding trousers, and a little 
 Spanish hat with a white feather swaling in it. The Spanish hat 
 was a novelty in 1851. The great Sombrero and pork-pie revolu- 
 tion had not yet taken place. Eeine, her faithful chamber-maid, 
 had dressed her. " She is perfect," Eeine exclaimed, as she stood 
 at the door, and in unfeigned admiration saw her mistress assisted 
 into her saddle : — she scarcely seemed to touch the outstretched 
 palm of the groom— and giving her horse a light touch of the 
 whip on the flank, caused him to curvet and paw his way up the 
 street. 
 
 "Yes," soliloquised Mademoiselle Eeine, " she is perfect. She 
 can do the haute ecole to a marvel. She would be a treasure at 
 rranconi's, MJe y ira nn joicr, peut-etre. She is not a bad 
 mistress, and never looks to see what there is between the pear 
 and the cheese. Mais, quelle drolesse ! " And Mademoiselle 
 Eeine, shrugging her shoulders, shut the door. 
 
 Mrs, Armytage passed some hundreds of acquaintances in the 
 park. Amazons and cavaliers in the ride; guardsmen and 
 dandies lounging at the rails. She patronised them all. She 
 puzzled the men ; she was the femme lihre, but allowed no liber- 
 ties. Iso one could say anything against her, and yet everybody 
 had an innate conviction that she did not belong to the category 
 of the immaculate. The Southbank, who was in great force in the 
 Park that afternoon, hated Mrs. Armytage even worse than she 
 did Miss Salusbury. " She's neither flesh nor fowl nor good red- 
 herring," was the disparaging remark of the plain-spoken South- 
 bank. The more cynical among the dandies said, that when she 
 had a fixed residence in town, her house was one where you 
 played at being well-behaved, and made believe to be proper.
 
 MRS. AUMYTAGE'S IMPULSE. 189 
 
 But everybody liked Mrs. Armytage's little dinners and card- 
 parties, her dry Sillery, lier sparklingBurgundy, and her conversation. 
 
 As she cantered homewards, she caught sight of Captain 
 William Goldthorpe, leaning over the rails. He Avas as splendid 
 as the sartor, sutor, shirt-maker, and jeweller's art could make 
 him ; but his moustache hung down, his eyelids drooped, and he 
 looked on the whole a very dejected dragoon indeed. She reined 
 in her horse, and looked at him long and earnestly. 
 
 "Poor AVilly Goldthorpe," she said, "to be so young and 
 good-looking, and to have so rich a papa, and yet to be in such 
 dreadful difficulties." 
 
 The dragoon recognised her, and raised his hat. 
 r "Just like his own fair curls," thought the widow. "Yes, 
 "Willy is very like Hugh. Poor Hugh ! " 
 
 And so she rode through Albert Gate.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CtTSTODES ? 
 
 Thet had brought him away from Hoogendracht, and made a 
 garde-cliiourme — a keeper of gaol-birds — of him. He was not 
 master of his own actions. He was in the hands of Fate ; and 
 Pate, through the intermediary of the Maritime Prefect of the 
 department of the Bouches-du-Scampre, had brought him to 
 Belleriport-upon-the-Sea, and made a gaoler of him. 
 
 The place was not cne that was much coveted, although it 
 entailed the wearing of a military uniform, even by people ordi- 
 narily so hungry for office, and so fond of wearing uniform as are 
 the French. An old soldier is glad enough to get a place as a game- 
 keeper or a garde-cliampfitre, or to slumber and snarl in the porter's 
 lodge iu some public establishment. He will not object to a place 
 in the custom-house, or at the Octroi barriers in Paris. He will 
 accept even at a pinch the appointment of porte-clefs or guardian 
 in a Parisian prison, or in a maison eentrale. But he shuns the 
 cMourme. An ineffaceable infamy attaches to all that is connected 
 with the galleys. The gardes-chiourme are looked upon as cousins- 
 german to the hangman. Although the convicts have been trans- 
 ferred to dry land, and (ten years since) were lodged in the Belle- 
 riport barracks, instead of being chained to the oar in monstrous 
 bi-remes and tri-remes ; the duties of their task-masters were still 
 analogous to those which they fulfilled iu the days when the galley- 
 master walked backwards and forwards, from stem to stern, along 
 the plank between the lines of rowers, and, with threats and 
 execrations, let fall his lash on the shoulders of the slaves who 
 faltered at the oar. 
 
 The gendarmes are accustomed to handle malefactors ; but they 
 shrink from the cliiourme. They conduct the convicts to its gates, 
 and give them over to the keepers, but there their office ends.
 
 QOS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES ? 191 
 
 "Were tbey to accept the detestable functions attached to the place 
 itself, their yellow belts would be tarnished, their moustaches would 
 wax limp, and their jack-boots dull; and the glory of their cocked 
 hats would be diminished. !For there is no greater error than to 
 suppose that a gendarme occupies a humiliatiugly inferior position 
 in the military hierarchy of France. The gendarmerie is a service 
 d' elite. No rude boys dare deride the tall man in the cocked 
 hat as they do the humble " Bobby" in England. They fear and 
 respect him, nay, even admire his imposing dress and resplendent 
 accoutrements. He is favoured by the municipal authorities, and 
 frequently deferred to, — not ordered hither and thither like a dog 
 or an English policeman. I have heard a private in this force 
 called " Monsieur le gendarme " by a shopkeeper. 
 
 So he had been brought from the peaceful Flemish convent, — 
 from innocent labours, from the calm abode where, if the evil 
 passions of men were not absolutely extinguished, they were latent 
 and subdued — to this Aceldama of Southern France, and put in 
 authority over thieves and murderers. Out of a gang of twenty 
 toiling at their slavish drudgery, the comrade who was to initiate 
 him into his duty could point out fourteen who had taken the life 
 of a man. 
 
 His duties were not many, and not difficult to learn. He was 
 to be a common garde-cliiourme. The commissary of the Bagne — 
 the governor of this Tartarus — read the minister's 'placet, and a 
 sealed letter of recommendation from the office of the Maritime 
 Prefect. He asked him nothing about his antecedents. Any 
 stick is considered good enough to beat a dog with, and at Belle- 
 riport any man whose hand was strong enough to hold the stick 
 was looked upon as qualified to wield it. The commissary asked 
 him if he could read and write. He answered, Tes, and by com- 
 mand read a passage or two from the framed rules and regulations 
 of the place hanging on the wall. He wrote, from dictation, au 
 extract from the penal code of the Bagne, inflicting ten years' 
 imprisonment with hard labour on any garde-cMourme convicted 
 of having favoured the escape of a convict. The commissary 
 glanced ath is handwriting, and remarked to a subordinate, " He 
 can spell." His name, Francois Vireloque, — it was so on his 
 passport, and wa,s as good as any other for such a nameless wretch
 
 192 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 as lie, — Lis age, liis height, Avere entered in a hnge book. He 
 was told to sign a certain declaration, promising obedience and 
 fidelity, and he did so. 
 
 "There is nothing else that I can do for you," said the com- 
 missary, closing the great book. " We ask questions neither from 
 our sheep nor our shepherds. All those we want to know are 
 answered in writing. You will be given over to a planton, who 
 will show you your duty, and I should counsel you to attend to 
 it. After four days' looking about you, it will be time enough 
 to go to work. AUez, mon garcon. You look strong and mus- 
 cular enough to make a charming garde-cliiourme, although I sup- 
 pose you were pretty well tired of the world before you entered 
 into this dog's life." 
 
 The commissaiy threw himself back into his arm-chair, and 
 blew his nose in a depreciatory manner. Even he despised his 
 subordinates. He forgot to despise himself; for, you see, that 
 is a lack of memory not very uncommon ; and, besides, there is 
 something in possessing power, well-nigh as absolute as that of an 
 Oriental pasha, over two thousand five hundred men, even though 
 they happen to be the greatest rascals in creation. The Maritime 
 Prefect was ostensibly the commissary's superior; but he had a 
 perfect horror of the Bagne, seldom ventured within its precincts, 
 and was very loth to interfere by word or deed with the scoundrelism 
 it contained, " There is pitch enough in my ships," observed the 
 prefect, " without my soiling my hands with those miscreants." 
 So he kept grand state at the Hotel of the Prefecture, and 
 approved all tlie reports and memoranda of the commissary. 
 This functionary was himself a very good-natured person, with a 
 profound disgust for the place and the people among whom he 
 was doomed to pass his life. He had once been a commissary of 
 police in Paris, — in the brilliant Quartier de 1' Opera, in fact — 
 but breaking down in not discovering one of the innumerable 
 conspiracies of Louis Philippe's reign, had been very nearly 
 losing his situation, when a friend, who was clief de hureau in the 
 department of marine, recommended him for the vacant post of 
 commissary of the Bagne at Belleriport. " 'Tis an easy place, 
 my friend," he said. " 'Tis as easy as being a schoolmaster. 
 Now there are schoolmasters and schoolmasters. If one has to
 
 QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CDSTODES ? 1&3 
 
 teach intelligent children whose parents expect them to make 
 progress, the calling has its difficulties and its responsibilities ; 
 but if one has only to teach incorrigible blockheads, whom no 
 one expects to learn anything, the life becomes easy. Tou have 
 nothing to do but punish." The commissary in difficulties 
 accepted the situation, and held it satisfactorily. He was now in 
 his tenth year of service. When the pious ecclesiastic who was 
 almoner of the Bagne talked to him of reclaiming any of the 
 outcasts under his charge, he made answer, " There is nothing 
 about reclaiming prisoners in the government instructions ; but 
 there is a great deal touching upon double irons, the ' grande 
 fatigue,' and the bastinado. Eeclaim your penitents as much as 
 ever you like, my dear abbe, only let them not shirk their work. 
 It is with me they will have to deal if they do." The commissary 
 had a pretty faded little wife, who had been an actress at the 
 Opera Comique. When she was in a good temper, she made him 
 nice dishes, and they talked of the dear old days of masked balls, 
 and dinners at the Cafe Anglais, and when on the morrow of 
 the carnival disorderly dehardeurs and litis used to be brought 
 before him in their masquerade costume. When she was cross 
 and had tlie migraine, he would come down into the Bagne and 
 lead the convicts a terrible life. His lady called the two thousand 
 five hundred prisoners " ces gueux." The commissary allowed 
 himself two hours' absence every evening, which he spent at the 
 principal cafe in the town of Belleriport. The town commissary, 
 the brigadier of gendarmerie, and some of the inferior employes of 
 the prefecture would smoke, and take their dimi-tasse, and play 
 draughts with him ; but the general public avoided the terrible 
 commissary of the Bagne. U seutait la cliiourme — " he smelt of 
 the hulks," they said. At home, in addition to the conversation 
 of Madame, he cultivated jonquils, and played dismal overtures on 
 the violoncello. A weary life this, but the commissary bore it, 
 for his pay was four times larger than he would have received in 
 an ordinary capacity elsewhere. He had his tenderness, his weak 
 point, this stern commissaire. He had a pretty little daughter, 
 Amanda, fourteen years of age, at school, in the convent of the 
 Sacred Heart in Paris ; and every franc of his savings helped to 
 swell the fund which was one day to culminate in Amanda's 
 

 
 194 THE SEVEX SOMS OF MAMMON. 
 
 wedding portion. Elle sera dotee par le Bagne — " the liulks sTiall 
 give ber a dowry," the commissary was wont gleefully to exclaim. 
 But little Amanda had never been witbin fifty leagues of tbat 
 abhorred Belleriport. 
 
 Pran9ois Yireloque, the uewly-appointed gaol-guard, was duly 
 banded over to the planton or guide. This man's name was a 
 mystery. The commissary knew it of course ; but be never men- 
 tioned it bimself, and seemed profoundly indifferent about having 
 a name at all. His comrades called him "Le Camus," the "Snub," 
 from the conformation of his nose. Even the commissary became 
 accustomed to address him by this not very complimentary epithet. 
 Le Camus seemed to care nothing about his nose, and went about 
 his business tranquilly. He v\ as an old hand at convict keeping, 
 and had been at Belleriport twenty years. Previously, he ad- 
 mitted to have been a ga7'de at Toulon, at Eochfort, and at Brest. 
 " I like it," said Le Camus. " I am a philosopher, and there is 
 quite enough to make me contented with my lot in the fact that 
 I have to drive convicts about, instead of being one myself." He 
 was a man of ancient and venerable appearance, with snowy hair, 
 a rosy cheek, and a mild blue eye. These gifts of nature did not, 
 however, prevent the Sieur le Camus from being an unconscionable 
 old villain, with a hard heart and a cruel band, and with an insa- 
 tiable penchant for anisette. 
 
 " Tou are welcome, my friend, to Belleriport," he chuckled, as 
 he led the new-comer to the storehouse, where he was to be sup- 
 plied with his uniform. " We want new blood down here terribly. 
 The commissary is a mere jackass, and the majority of our com- 
 rades have their brains in the soles of their boots. Tou will not 
 enjoy much of the esteem of society at large," — Le Camus habit- 
 ually spoke in the inflated style common to the half-educated 
 Frenchmen ; — " there is a prejudice, a most unjust prejudice, 
 against the profession of garde-cliioiirme ; but you will know how 
 to make yourself respected among these gentlemen. There is one 
 of them. Tou will make him respect you. Tchaoup ! " And, 
 with this curious interjection, he raised the thin cane or ladine 
 which with the rest of his fellows he bore as a symbol of authority, 
 and brought it down with all his strength — which, his age not- 
 withstanding, was by no means contemptible — across the shoulders
 
 QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES ? 195 
 
 of a "wretched creature ia coarse drab vestnieuts, and with a red 
 •woollen nightcap on his shaven head, who had been gaping and 
 staring at the stranger ; while his companion, another forlorn 
 specimen of humanity, in similar attire, and to whom he was 
 attached by strong leg-shackles, was busily polishing a cannon- 
 ball with sand. He sat to this work, like a stone-breaker, with his 
 legs wide apart, and his work-mate had to stoop a little. There 
 was a pile of balls on either side of him, one rusty and the other 
 polished. 
 
 It did not appear that the convict standing up had been guilty 
 of any offence beyond gaping and staring. Le Camus merely 
 struck him with his cane because he was fond of hitting people 
 who dared not hit him again. The poor creature took his stripe 
 as a matter of course, uttering a short, sharp yell, writhing his 
 shoulders, and looking a curse at his tormentor. The polisher of 
 cannon-balls looked up with a grin, as though he thought it an 
 exceedingly lucky thing to have escaped this stroke of practical 
 humour on the part of the garde-cliiourme ; and a sailor-marine 
 standing sentry — not over the convicts, but over the government 
 storehouse — close by remarked in gruff approval, " II Va attrappe : 
 c' est tres Men." 
 
 " The only way to get on with these brute beasts, comrade," 
 the Sieur le Camus said, by way of explanation, as they entered 
 the storehouse. 
 
 !Fran9ois Vireloque was speedily provided with his uniform, and 
 with the kit and accoutrements allotted to a garde-cliiourme. The 
 dress was exceedingly hideous, and the convict element struggled 
 with the military for predominance in it. A coarse greatcoat of 
 blue drab, with red cuffs, collars, and epaulettes, grey trousers 
 with a red stripe, thick boots, over which came clumsy white 
 gaiters, a honnet de police with a red worsted tassel, and a pipe- 
 clayed sword-belt, from which hung a short heavy sabre, and his 
 equipment was complete. Then they gave him a dark lantern, a 
 pair of pocket-pistols, a pair of handcuffs, an iron hdillon or gag, 
 and a livret or pamphlet containing the rules and regulations for 
 the life of a garde-chiourme. 
 
 He reported himself before the commissary, was inspected, 
 approved, and dismissed. The planton took him in hand again, 
 
 2
 
 196 THE SEVEN" SONS OF MAMMOX. 
 
 and the remainder of that day, with the wliole of the next, was 
 devoted to exploring every nook and cranny of the great Bagne of 
 Belleriport. He saw the convicts' dormitories, their solitary cells, 
 their work-rooms for wet weather, their hospital, and their grave- 
 yard. As the (jarde-cldo'urme was destined to remain long enongh 
 In Belleriport to become acquainted with all the features and 
 peculiarities of his abode, it is not expedient at present to antici- 
 pate matters by describing any of these apartments in detail. By- 
 and-by, you may know all about them, and why the garde-cliiourme 
 was sent thither, and why he had ceased to be a Lay Brother, and 
 who and what he was, and whetlier he had ever worn the cassock 
 of a clergyman, or the scarlet and gold-lace of a soldier, instead of 
 the friar's dufSe-frock or the convict-keeper's belt and lonnet de 
 police. 
 
 When every part of the barrack had been visited, they entered 
 a boat, manned oj convicts, with a garde-cMourme as coxswain, 
 who moved the tiller with one hand, and plied his cane with the 
 other, and crossed a sheet of water to the immense dockyard and 
 arsenal of Belleriport. There the Lay Brother saw the convicts 
 at work in gangs of hundreds together, always linked two and two. 
 They were sawing blocks of stone, piling timber, dragging huge 
 tumbrils full of stone and gravel, hauling weights up, and other- 
 wise performing the duties of beasts of burden. And among them 
 continually circulated the gardes-cTiiourone, calling them abusive 
 names, and bringing down their lithe canes on their backs. 
 
 " At Brest," observed Le Camus, " we are not permitted to 
 use our hadines. At Belleriport a system more sage prevails. 
 Tchaoup ! " he cried again, flicking but not absolutely striking 
 with his cane a tall and athletic convict, who with his mate was 
 trundling a wheelbarrow full of sand up a plank, somewhat too 
 lazily as the officer thought. 
 
 "Hands off! "cried the convict fiercely, and in the English 
 tongue ; but he took care not to return the insult, and kept 
 a firm grip upon the wheelbarrow, as if fearful of giving liberty 
 to his hands. 
 
 "It is well," sneered Le Camus, "it is well, Mr. John Bull. 
 I dare say your words were mutinous enough, but you are too 
 artful to get yourself into trouble. After all," he whispered to
 
 QUIS CUSrODIET Il'SOS CUSTODES ? 197 
 
 Frrtucois Yireloque, " I was not quite en regie in touching him ; 
 the fellow was doing nothing that immediately called for punish- 
 ment, and might have reported me to the sergeant, and so on to 
 the commissar}', for cruelty. To be sure, I might have said that 
 he was skulking: and a garde-cldourme' s word is always taken 
 before a convict's. Look at the fellow. What a robust scoundrel 
 he is ! Are they all like him, I wonder, those Englishmen ? 
 "When he came here first he had masrnificent auburn hair, mous- 
 tache, and beard. He is just your build — not to offend you by 
 the comparison ; and,'upon my word, compere Vireloque, you have 
 somewhat of an English look." 
 
 " I have been in England," answered the garde-cTiiourme slowly, 
 " many, many years ago. I have seen many Englishmen like hinu 
 yonder with the wheelbarrow. How sunburnt he is ! " 
 
 " Yes, one might imagine that he had passed half his life in the 
 Indies. But it is nothing, after all, but our southern sun. It 
 soon tans the fairest convict, and if that doesn't tan him, the 
 bastinado will. Here he is, coming down the plank." 
 
 The athletic Englishman, with his chain-fellow, came down with 
 the empty wheelbarrow. The chain-fellow could not have been of 
 much assistance to him in his work. He was a diminutive and 
 almost deformed negro — an old negro, too, wlio had dreadful 
 white eyebrows seaming his black face, and with his red woollen 
 nightcap wanted only a tricoloured cockade to look like a mon- 
 strous caricature of Toussaint L'Ouverture. He also had "rinned^ 
 and shown his teeth when the garde-chiourme had wantonly 
 insulted him who shared his misery. The convicts of Belleriport 
 were strictly practical believers in the philosophy of La Eoehe- 
 foucault, and always found something to rejoice over in the mis- 
 fortunes of their best friends. 
 
 The Englishman gazed with some interest at the new garde- 
 chiourme, muttered something to himself in English, and then 
 something to his yoke-fellow in Ereuch. Anon he was called away 
 to some fresh task. 
 
 " "What is he here for ? " asked rran9ois Yireloque. 
 
 " Do you mean the negro ? " returned Le Camus. " Meurtre. 
 Killing a cattle-dealer of Poissy. He got off" the major sentence 
 for assassinai. He didn't shoot or stab his man with a knife, but
 
 198 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 bit His nose off, tore one of his eyes nearly from the socket, and 
 then knelt upon and strangled him. There being no lethal weapon 
 used, the jury found him guilty with 'extenuating circumstances,' 
 and he only had travaux forces d, vie. He is a lifer. Don't you 
 see his double irons. If he misconducts himself, he has triple 
 ones ; and as he can't walk with them, is obliged to lie on the floor 
 of a cell." 
 
 "I don't mean the negro. I mean the other." 
 
 " Oh, the Englishman. He's a lifer too. Burglary and attempt 
 to murder too ; that's his little affair. It took hard swearing, 
 though, to convict him. He very nearly proved an alibi. "Was 
 at a railway-statiou, his counsel protested, when he was said to 
 bave been at Chaillot. All the eloquence of M. le Procureur 
 Imperial had to be employed to drum a persuasion of his guilt 
 into the heads of the jury. They are so stupid, those juries." 
 
 '= At Chaillot, did you say ? " 
 
 " Tes, at Cliaillot. It was necessary to prove tbat be had been 
 at Chaillot ; thougb of course M. le Procureur Imperial could 
 bave proved him to have been anywhere be pleased. A very 
 clever man M. le Procureur Imperial." 
 
 "Is he quiet?" 
 
 " Yes ; il est assez Ion diable. He has not yet been punished, 
 although he frequently suffers for the sins of his black friend; 
 for when the negro has triple irons for three days or so, our 
 Englishman has to sit or stand by his side : aud when the blacka- 
 moor gets the bastinado, whicb is his pleasant fate about once a 
 month, his comrade has to stand by and look on." 
 
 " Horrible ! " 
 
 " Horrible ! Ah, you are but young to the business. You'll 
 soon get all that nonsense out of your head, after you've seen a 
 few more horrible things." 
 
 "Is he always chained to that black demon ?" 
 
 "Always! Death alone can unrivet his manacles. Tou see, 
 our lambs are never uncoupled save when one dies, or is sentenced 
 to deatb for killing his brother convict." 
 
 " They kill each other, then ?" 
 
 " Occasionally. Cest line petite distraction ; it relieves the 
 monotony of their existence."
 
 QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES ? 199 
 
 " Do tliej never kill their jailers ? " 
 
 " Jailer^j ! Oli, you mean us ? Bali, it is not a pretty word, 
 jailer! AVell, sometimes they murder a garde-cliiourme who is 
 fool enough to be looking the wroug way, but that is his own 
 fault. And now, my friend," Le Camus continued, "I think we 
 have seen everything that is to be seen in the dockyard and the 
 Bagne to boot. Two of our little institutions you have not 
 witnessed, the infliction of the bastinado and of the guillotine. 
 But you will have time enough to assist at both these ceremonies. 
 "We don't trouble the executeur ties liautes osuvres of the depart- 
 ment when we have a capital case. La chiourme keeps a guillo- 
 tine on its own premises." 
 
 They took boat^ 'igaiu, and went back to the Bagne. That 
 evening Le Camus was on leave, and he took Eran9ois Vireloque 
 to a wretched cabaret just outside the dockyard gates, and fre- 
 quented exclusively by gardes-thiourme. Here le Sieur le Camus 
 submitted to be treated to several glasses of absinthe, and became 
 convivially conversational. 
 
 "Tou had better enjoy yourself to-night," he said, "for to- 
 morrow you will have to study your livret of duties, and will be 
 examined upon them by M. le Commissaire. Burn M. le Com- 
 missaire ! I hate him. Yes ; I will have yet another pipe and 
 another absinthe. Tou are a silent fellow, but you are generous. 
 How like an Englishman you are !" 
 
 " I am an Alsatian. I come from Strasbourg," answered 
 Francois Vireloque. 
 
 " Ah, that's half a German, and a German's half an English- 
 man. By the way, I forgot to tell you that our friend who is 
 chained to the negro always stoutly protests his innocence. M. 
 le Commissaire even says that he has doubts about his case. I 
 remember once, when that wretched black was in trouble, and the 
 Eno-lishman had to keep him company in his cell, that it was my 
 duty to take them their victuals. The negro was sleeping in his 
 triple irons, the lazy old rascal, and I had some talk with the 
 Englishman. He is not generally very communicative, but that 
 evening I got him to loosen his tongue. I remember well the 
 finish of his conversation. ' Oarde-cldourme,'' he said, almost 
 solemnly, 'I am the victim of an infernal plot. I am here
 
 200 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 tlirough the wickedness and the treachery of a she-demon with 
 yellow ringlets, who has been my Evil Genius through life.' 
 What on earth is the matter with you, Brother Yireloque ? " he 
 exclaimed, suddenly stopping in his discourse. 
 
 The Lay Brother, the garde-cliioiir'me, had buried his face in 
 his hands, and, his head prone to the cabaret-iohlQ, was sobbing 
 violently.
 
 CHAPTEH XVI. 
 
 MBS. C-ESAR DONKIK. 
 
 As a freeboru EnglishmaD, of full age, unconvicted of any 
 offence, and with means amply sufficient to defray any costs of 
 charges, you might be desirous, I assume, to obtain board and 
 lodging in a genteel family where, at a moderate outlay, all the 
 comforts, luxuries, and refinements of life were offered. Turning 
 over the supplement of a great daily journal, a well-worded 
 advertisement informed you as to the place where that board and 
 lodging with its concomitants might be obtained. JNIrs. Coesar 
 Donkin was a lady of much experience in advertising, and was 
 generally fortunate enough to secure a left-hand top-corner. To 
 see herself there on a fine Monday morning in the boarding and 
 lodging season was, next to affixing a receipt to a bill for a 
 month's hospitality, her chief delight. To ladies and gentlemen 
 seeking a truly English home her doors stood widely open. Tou 
 were to apply, by letter only, post-paid, to Omicrou, care of Mr. 
 Tryfell, pastrycook, Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace, Ticonderago Square. 
 The highest references were oflered and required ; and as regards 
 the first, a letter to Omicron very speedily brought about an inter- 
 view with Mrs. Csesar Donkin, who referred you to the pastrycook, 
 to several neighbouring tradesmen, to a beneficed clergyman of 
 the Established Church residing in the immediate neighbourhood 
 of the Giant's Causeway, Ireland, and to herself. To look at 
 Mrs. Csesar Donkin was generally found sufficient. You made 
 up your mind and boarded, or didn't board, after five minutes' 
 parley. As to your own references, a month's payment in 
 advance was held by Mrs. Csesar Donkin to be far more con- 
 clusive of a candidate's respectability than any number of testi- 
 monials from peers of the realm, members of Parliament, or 
 dignitaries of the Church. But there was a proviso, there was a
 
 202 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 saving clause, — there was one little requirement wliich tbe hostess 
 of 15, Bergen-op-Zoom Teri'ace, expected yoii to fulfil ; and if 
 you were unable to do so, a gentleman might just as well hope to 
 occupy a front parlour furnished in Buckingham Palace, with 
 partial board from the royal kitchen, and Phipps the Ineffable to 
 officiate as a boy in buttons, as to become an inmate of Mrs. 
 Csesar Donkin's boarding-house. She received no gentleman 
 under sixty years of age. xibove that age, she gave ample scope 
 and verge enough, — she would have welcomed Methuselah with 
 affable gladness, — but sixty was her minimum. Her rule was 
 inflexible. The laws of the Modes and Persians might have been 
 summed up in her advertisement. She never departed from its 
 terms. Head it. 
 
 BOARD AND EESIDENCE.— In tlie immediate vicinity of Ken- 
 sington Gardens, the Marble Arch, Madame Tussaud's Extibition, 
 and within an easy distance of Kensal-Green Cemetery, and other 
 fashionable places of amusement, all the comforts of home and the 
 luxuries of refined life are offered, by a lady moving in the first circles, 
 to ladies and gentlemen of means and i^osition. The highest references 
 given and required. Address, by letter only, post-paid, to ' Omicron,' 
 care of Mr. Tryfell, pastrycook, Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace, Ticonderago 
 Square. N.B. No gentleman under sixty need apply. 
 
 The sting of the announcement wasju this caudal postscript. 
 Tou might be as rich as Croesus, but unless you were sixty Mrs. 
 Caesar Donkin would have nothing to say to you. Once, and 
 once only, she had relaxed her rule, and had consented to receive 
 a battered East Indian reputed to be enormously rich, and who 
 would only own to fifty-nine. Mr. Jaghire stayed many months. 
 He went away one morning to Malvern to drink the waters. He 
 didn't come back. After the lapse of about a year, he wrote to 
 Mrs. Caesar Donkin, professedly from some unpronounceable place 
 in Hindostan, whither he had proceeded, he said, in the hope of 
 repairing his fortune, which had been grievously injured by dis- 
 astrous speculations in indigo. He intreated her to take the 
 greatest care of a very old and ragged shawl dressing-gown, and 
 of a hubblebubble pipe much damaged, which, with a file of the 
 Bengal Rurlcaru, and a slack-baked cat called Ginger, were the 
 only chattels he had left at Bergeu-op-Zoom Terrace. The slack- 
 baked cat he requested Mrs. Donkin to accept as a present. He
 
 MRS. C^SAR BONKIX. 203 
 
 talked of making her speedy remittances, — of sending her draughts 
 at sight, jars of chutuee, kiucobs, uncut gems, all the wealtli of 
 the Indies, for aught that appeared, — but he regretted that at 
 present, owing to " the infamous conduct of his agents," he was 
 unable to send anything. Stay : he sent his compliments, and 
 had the honour to inform Mrs. Caesar Donkin that he was forty- 
 five next birthday. 
 
 The dismal falling-off of this depraved Anglo-Indian— it was 
 years before the mutiny, but he must have been Nana Sahib in 
 disguise — was a heavy blow to Mrs. Caesar Donkin ; but the perfidy 
 of Jaghire taught her wisdom, and thenceforth she took care that 
 none of the male sex but sexagenarians entered her doors. When 
 a gentleman called on Mrs. Donkin, she took stock of him nar- 
 rowly. Five minutes' inspection generally sufficed to enable her 
 to come to a decision. She could see through paint and padding 
 and bracing-up and buckling-in. No form of wiggery was unfa- 
 miliar to her. She asked for no certificate of baptism. She said 
 to herself, " This gentleman is either over or under sixty," and 
 accepted or rejected him accordingly. After the Jaghire catas- 
 trophe she was never known to err. The loss she sustained was 
 in some sense salutary to her ; and all her sexagenarian guests 
 declared that, since that " Indian fellow" went away, her monthly- 
 bills always contained items for which she had never thought of 
 charging before. There was no disputing those bills ; they were, 
 like her laws, unalterable. If an old gentleman grumbled, Mrs. 
 Caesar Donkin curtsied, and requested him to provide himself 
 with another domicile by that day month. In most cases the old 
 gentleman was senile enough to cry, and beg pardon, and was 
 re-admitted to the privilege of paying about three guineas a week 
 for his board and lodging ; but he never grumbled again. 
 
 Mrs. Caesar Donkin had an enemy, Mrs. Grabblecheese, of 
 Great Aboukir Street, a rival lodging-house keeper. Mrs. Grab- 
 blecheese used to call the establishment in Bergen-op-Zoom 
 Terrace " the hospital," " the paralytic asylum," " the refuge for 
 the destitute," " Crutchstick Castle," and the like opprobrious 
 names. Mrs. Caesar Donkin laughed her bitter laugh, and asked 
 how it was that Mrs. Grabblecheese could only get commercial 
 elerks, half-pay lieutenants, and decayed old maids as boarders ;
 
 204 THK SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 why she didn't pay the butcher, baker, candlestick-maker, and so 
 forth ; and what she had done with the money of tliat poor deceived 
 Miss Gumm, whom she had taken into partnership, and with 
 whom she had, after some six months, quarrelled, even to the 
 unseemly extent of public litigation ? In the Paddington County 
 Court the cross actions of Grrabblecheese versus Gumm (disputed 
 right of property in a Pembroke table and a volume of Blair's 
 Sermons), and Gumm versus Grabblecheese (money lent), are yet 
 reckoned among the causes eelehres of the district. The quondam 
 partners were very nearly going up to the Common Pleas, each 
 with her several plaint of assault and battery. That Gumm had 
 torn oif Grabblecheese's false front the milkman and the news- 
 paper boy could testify ; but, thtn, were not 'Liza the housemaid, 
 and Stampell the postman, ready to swear that Grabblecheese had 
 knocked out one of Gumm's false teetli with her matronly and by 
 no means feeble fist, in the very passage of the house in Greo^t 
 Aboukir Street? How Mrs. Csesar Donkin gloated over the feuds 
 of her foewomen ! " I never go to law," she said, with a toss of 
 her head. The legal gentlemen who fomented the quarrels be- 
 tween Gumm and Grabblecheese earnestly wished that she would. 
 " Jpay my bills," Mrs. Donkin proudly declared. It was certain 
 that Mrs. Grabblecheese didn't; and when Miss Gumm's money, 
 which wasn't much, was spent, the firm oscillated for a consider- 
 able period between Great Aboukir Street and Portugal Street, 
 Lincoln's Inn Pields. It was, indeed, notoriously insolvent ; and 
 Mrs. G.'s only defence was, that if she paid nobody, nobody, on 
 the other hand, paid her. " My husband doesn't drink," Mrs. 
 Donkin used to say. Mr. Grabblecheese, it is useless to conceal, 
 did drink. He was a dissolute corn-chandler ; that is to say, he 
 professed to have once dealt in cereals on commission, but he 
 had come to a very draffy and husky stage, and imbibed continu- 
 ously. He was not unfrequently laid up in lavender, or in tobacco 
 and malt-liquor rather, in Whitecross Street ; and his periodical 
 appearance before the Commissioner made much mirth among the 
 tipstaves and the attorneys' clerks. " The low wretches," Mrs. 
 Cresar Donkin used to say, with a supreme curl of her lip, when 
 she alluded to the entire Grabblecheese interest and connection. 
 The male Donkin, her husband, was a musician. He was pro-
 
 MRS. C-ESAi; DONKIX. 205 
 
 fessioual, and played every night during the season in the orchestra 
 of the Surrey Theatre. In the summer months he went to the 
 sea-side, or to some suburban music-hall ; at all events, he ^vas not 
 visible from July to September. His instrument was the violin; 
 he dressed in rusty black ; his demeanour was placid, and his nose 
 was red. If he did not drink, his next neighbour must decidedly 
 have been an ardent votary of Bacchus, and he, Donkiu, have 
 caught the convivial infection. He never mingled with the 
 domestic concerns of Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace. He came home 
 very late, arid breakfasted in the kitchen, and departed quietly 
 and unostentatiouslv, as he came. The Grabblecheeses declared 
 that the area-steps were his ordinary channel of ingress and egress. 
 He was the meekest and mildest of fiddlers, and had a smooth, 
 shining, old, bald head, which the boys in the Surrey Gallery at 
 Easter time, and on Boxing-night, used to find an irresistible 
 target whereat to aim nutshells and orange-peel. He bore all 
 ■with equanimity. He would have endured even a ginger-beer 
 bottle, and smiled under concussion of the brain. " Where's the 
 use," he would say to his comrade who played the flageolet, when 
 advised to resent scornful epithets of " catgut," and when insult- 
 ingly desired to " strike up," — " where's the use ? I'm a disap- 
 pointed man." The old gentlemen boarders who by chance met 
 him about Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace merely saw in him a shabby 
 elderly man with a blue bag. There might be boots in the bag, 
 or law-papers, anything. Few suspected the fiddle ; and only 
 from the occasional presence of a lump of rosin on the mantelpiece 
 of Mrs. Csesar Donkin's sanctum, and a stray strand of horsehair 
 floating about, could you have inferred anything as to the vocation 
 of her husband. 
 
 The dinner-hour in Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace was seven o'clock, 
 and at about thirty minutes before that hour, and on a fine evening 
 in the latter part of May, Mrs. Csesar Donkiu sate in the sanctum 
 before named busily occupied in arranging the dessert for the 
 coming banquet. She always gave her guests dessert. It helped 
 them on with their wine. She liked them to dine late. They 
 lunched at their clubs or abroad, — not but what she had a middav 
 refection of the genteelest description, — and a late dinner made 
 them less hungry than thirsty. She liked the old boys to be
 
 20 G THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 thirsty, and to have plenty of -n-ine, and of the very best, from 
 their own wine-merchants. Tithe and toll Mrs, Donkin might 
 indeed have taken on the decanters of the ancient boarders, but 
 she would have scorned to adulterate or to dilute their potations ; 
 nay, when their own stores were temporarily exhausted, she was 
 glad to supply them with wines and liqueurs of the very best 
 vintages, for which she did not forget to charge a handsome price. 
 " IS'o Cape sherry, no logwood port, no British brandy for me," 
 was Mrs. Cassar Donkin's maxim. She sent for the finest wines 
 with which Mr. Harrington Parker, of Pall JMall, could furnish 
 her, and was quite contented with a profit not exceeding seventy- 
 five per cent. 
 
 " My gentlemen like port," she said ; " it warms the cockles of 
 their old hearts. Once get 'em over their wine, and they don't 
 want to go out ; do they. Puffin ? " 
 
 "Words similar to these rose to Mrs. Caesar Donkin's lips on the 
 very afternoon of which I am speaking. The young person 
 addressed as Puffin meekly acquiesced, as it was her practice to 
 acquiesce in everything that everybody said. Miss Puffin was an 
 incarnate affirmative. It would be inappropriate to call her an 
 animated one, for she was the stillest aud quietest of woman- 
 kind. There had never been any animation about her ; it wasn't 
 in her. 
 
 Mrs. Donkin's sanctum was a kind of polygonal excrescence 
 which had been partly robbed from the kitchen-stairs, aud partly 
 from the back-parlour, and incommoded the entrance to both. 
 There had, it is presumable, once been, a window to it, which had 
 been bricked up and papered over in the days of the window-tax ; 
 but a sunken tracery of its outline was still visible, throwing the 
 impossible dragons and abnormal flower-baskets in the wall-paper 
 violently out of perspective. To compensate its disappearance, a 
 hole had been knocked in the ceiling, and a skylight fitted, through 
 which slippery vantage-ground the ill-omened cat Gringer fre- 
 quently looked down with baleful eyes on the confabulations of 
 Mrs. Donkin and Miss Puffin. The mistress of the liouse had a 
 strange leaning to this animal, sole relic of the faithless Jaghire ; 
 for the shawl dressing-gown, the hubblebubble, aud the Bengal 
 Sicrkaru, had Jong since gone the way of all rubbish. Ginger
 
 MRS. CiESAU DONKIN. 207 
 
 was repulsive in aspect, profligate aud felonious in disposition ; 
 yet still Mrs. Ctesar leaned towards liim, sometimes witli affection, 
 sometimes with a lieartli-broom. He was a cynical cat, and from 
 long acquaintance with every missile that could be propelled 
 against his ribs and head, had grown callous. "When he was not 
 on the skylight, he sat habitually among the fragments of bottle- 
 glass in the roughcast on the wall of the back yard. Now and 
 then he caught a sparrow whose senses had become stupefied by 
 the London smoke, and had so become weak upon the wing, and 
 then, having' eaten him, Ginger rejoiced over the wing in a 
 manner horrible to behold. 
 
 The polj'-gonal sanctum was full of cupboards with locks that 
 would have defied Hobbs, to say nothing of the tampering of any 
 evilly-disposed housemaid. It being May, and warm weather, the 
 meagre little fireplace was garnished with a neatly-crumpled 
 supplement of the Times, from which, however, the Bergen-op- 
 Zoom advertisement had been carefully cut. Mrs. Donkin had 
 an almost superstitious reverence for these aids to publicity, look- 
 ing upon them as things that had cost money and brought money, 
 and were not to be lightly cast away. She kept the scissored 
 fragments in an old volume of Elegant Extracts, and designed to 
 make an album of them some day. 
 
 On the mantelshelf reposed the male Donkin's lump of rosin, 
 and a couple of pit orders for the theatre, the which, judiciously 
 distributed, were found to be very serviceable in inducing trades- 
 people of a gay turn of mind to send in articles of first-rate 
 quality at reduced prices. The rosin was flanked on either side 
 by two little weasened black profile portraits in the sticking- 
 plaster style of art, one representing Mr. Caesar Donkin in an 
 enormous coat-collar and an aggressively protuberant shii't-frill, 
 the other, Mrs. Caesar Donkin in leg-of-mutton sleeves and a 
 hat like a cart wheel placed horizontally. The gum had long 
 since become desiccated, and portions of the heads and busts 
 of the personages represented curled away from the fly-blown 
 Bristol board. Little triangles of glass stuck in the corners of 
 the warped frames. The bronzing with which the high lights 
 had been relieved had become discoloured, and dotted Mr. 
 Donkin's whiskers and Mrs. Donkin's hat-ribbons with a tar-
 
 208 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 nishecl flufF, giving them the appearance of rusted Ethiopians. 
 A little inscription in pencil beneath each portrait told the 
 spectator that they were executed on the Chain Pier, Brighton, 
 in July, 1829. Had there ever been a time, I wonder, when 
 Mrs. Csesar Donkiu cared less about Mammon than about matri- 
 mony ? Perhaps. On the wall fronting the fireplace there hung 
 another little portrait, a worn-out, mangy miniature, the carna- 
 tions all faded, and one eye smeared out, on a bulging scrap 
 of ivory. It was the picture of an unhealthy, inane-looking 
 child in a frock and frills, — a mournful little object, who seemed 
 to be weakly lisping, " I always had the rickets, and died of water 
 on the bram, if you please." Such, it may be, was the end of 
 young Csesar Donkin, if there ever had been a Caisar Donkin 
 who was young, and wore a frock and frills, and had his miniature 
 
 taken. 
 
 The dessert on the table — it was one of the order called by 
 upholsterers " occasional," and a Trench furniture dealer would 
 decidedly have put ifc down as a meiMe d'occasion — was not such a 
 display as Mr. Duflield or Miss Mutrie would have longed to have 
 painted. It was mainly of the dry and gritty description. There 
 were some argillaceous-looking biscuits ; several pippins, whose 
 bruised countenances gave them the appearance of fighting pippins, 
 and of having been in the Eing, and heavily grassed in a contest 
 with the Blustering Eailer; some apparently petrified plums ; a 
 few dropsical oranges, suggesting boiled or blown-out integuments 
 and woolly interiors ; a plateful of almonds and raisins, very dried 
 up and shrivelled; and some squabby flattened figs. This, with if 
 seed-cake, presenting a curious model of difierent geological strata, 
 completed the dessert. There was seldom any need to renew it. 
 The old gentlemen who sat at Mrs. Donkin's table were in general 
 toothless ; and as for the ladies, they had more reasons for pleasing 
 the landlady than the landlady had for pleasing them, and so Mrs. 
 Donkin did not study them much. Now and then the old gentle- 
 men were generous, and on birthdays and the like brought home 
 choice pears and strawberries, nay, grapes and pines even, from 
 Covent Garden. Mrs. Donkiu did not in the least object, and 
 the improved dessert made a gala-day for herself, the ladies, and 
 Puflau.
 
 Mils. C-ESAll DONKIN. 209 
 
 A word may be spared for a glance at the two ladies I have 
 mentioned by name. "With Mrs. Donkin's age I have nothing to 
 do ; it would be ungallant to make inquiry into it ; but taking 
 her appearance for all in all, it is much to be feared that if Mrs. 
 Donkin had lived in the reign of Elizabeth or James I., she would 
 have been summarily sent to the stake, or at least dragged through 
 a series of horseponds as a witch. The very sight of her would 
 have set Mr. Hopkins itching to tie her thumbs together, and her 
 facial ensemble would have been irresistible to the Eeverend 
 Cotton Mather. We know how many perfectly innocent and 
 ^virtuous, albeit hideous, old ladies were unjustly burnt alive in the- 
 days of witchcraft persecution ; and, remembering this, the ilT- 
 favouredness of Mrs. Donkin's appearance should not have militated 
 against the presumption that she was in all respects a most esti- 
 mable personage. Granting that she wore on her head a faded 
 silken mutch, or hood, or calash, or something very much resem- 
 bling the head-gear of the ladies who met on the blasted heath 
 what time Macbeth was made Thane of Cawdor ; granting that 
 from beneath this headdress there hung elf-locks of grizzled and 
 dishevelled hair; granting that Mrs. CcTsar Donkin's countenance 
 was, ia the way of wrinkles and crow's-feet, a chart of defiance to 
 Mr. AVyld and all other eminent geographers ; granting that on 
 her upper lip and dented chin some sparse and bristly hairs of un- 
 definable hue asserted themselves : granting that two discoloured 
 fangs made an unpleasantly prominent appearance when she opened 
 her withered lips ; granting that what little of her neck was 
 visible presented a remarkable series of gnarled corrugations ; 
 granting that her shoulders were very high, her back very round,. 
 and her hands long, lean, and garnished with orange-tawny nails 
 that approached the form of claws ; — granting all these peculiari- 
 ties, it would be manifestly unjust to attach the stigma of sorcery 
 to a lady who doubtless possessed every quality of head and 
 heart necessary to endear her to her own sex and to the community 
 at large. 
 
 That implacable Mrs. Grabblecheese boldly insinuated and 
 resolutely maintained that Mrs. Cajsar Donkin never washed. 
 "Well, supposing that she never did ? We can be virtuous without 
 soap, I presume. Some of the holiest hermits of antiquity were
 
 310 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 quite unacquainted with the use of the flesh-brush and the foot- 
 bath. If Mrs. Caesar Donkin was averse from lavatory exertion, 
 her boarders had never to complain of a deficiency of towels or 
 brown Windsor. Everything in her house, herself always excepted, 
 was as clean as a new pin. The furniture and metal work 
 were as bright as the sun, and she was one of the spots on it. 
 
 The captious complained of her attire ; surely she had a right to 
 wear Avhat clothes she liked. Her garments were of silk, although 
 they certainly had seen their best, and perhaps their w^orst, days ; 
 for, short of absolute tatters, they had reached the superlative 
 degree of shabbiuess. Prom Mrs. Caesar Donkin's girdle there 
 hung a bunch of keys, which gave her a pleasant chatelaine look, 
 compounded of a cellaress in a nunnery and a female warder in 
 the House of Correction, She wore, too, an apron, conjectured> 
 from its colour and texture, to have belonged to Mr. Caesar Don- 
 kin in his early days of snufi-takiug, and to have served him as a 
 pocket-handkerchief. When to this you add very roomy list 
 slippers, and a very remarkable brooch set in silver, and the stone 
 of which was very like a petrified whelk, Mrs. Caesar Donkin 
 stands, or rather sits, before you iu that unadorned beauty which 
 is said to be adorned the most. 
 
 Eespecting her companion, Miss Pufiin, there is no need to 
 enter into such minuteness of detail. Everybody felt and said 
 that Puffin was nobody. Mrs. Caesar Donkin told her so at least 
 five hundred times a-day, and the worthy body seemed perfectly 
 contented to be regarded as a nullity. She was a very plaeaWe 
 little w"oman, with hair that had seemingly been carefully boiled 
 until all the colour had been expressed from it, and with a com- 
 plexion that bad also undergone an analogous process of stew^ing 
 down. If Pufiin never smiled, it may be for the reason that her 
 teeth were uneven, or that she had nothing to laugh at. If she 
 seldom looked you in the face, it was perhaps because her eyes 
 were very weak, and the lids thereof given to inflammation. If 
 her hands were so very thin and bluely transparent, incessant hard 
 work may have been the cause ; and if, to sum up her personality, 
 her poor little harege frock was dismally frayed and faded, it may 
 be accounted for by the fact that it was very nearly the only dress 
 which Pufiin had to wear.
 
 Mils. CESAR LO-NKIX. 211 
 
 Being jSTobody did not prevent people occasionally asking, in a 
 lazy kind of way, how she came to be nobody aud nothing. A 
 few surmises respecting her were hazarded, but they involved no 
 interest, and were seldom carried out to investigation. Some 
 said she had been a partner of Mrs. Caesar Donldn, and had been 
 cozened out of her shai'e in the business ; others that she had been 
 a boarder with a small annuity which had ceased, and being des- 
 titute, was now dependent on 3Irs. Caesar Donkin's bounty, and 
 did what household work she could to assist her, for her keep. 
 Then there "was a party who said that she was a bankrupt day- 
 school keeper hiding from her creditors. Another risked the con- 
 jecture that she was Mrs. Donkin's sister, niece, daughter even ; 
 but the most generally received opinion was, that Miss Pufl&n had 
 been a domestic servant, elevated from the kitchen to the parlour, 
 and admitted to the full confidence of the lady of the house, and 
 intrusted with all her secrets, because " she knew something about 
 her," and could do her an injury if she chose. Don't for one 
 moment imagine that one ten-tliousandth part of the charity 
 which exists in London is to be found in the dinner and asylum 
 announcements that appear every day in the newspapers. Puffin 
 was about thirty years of age, and was, it need not be said, " a 
 maiden all forlorn," at whom there is too much reason to fear that 
 " the man all tattered and torn " of the nursery rhyme, albeit 
 excited by the morn-crowing of an early village cock, and an ofier 
 from a "priest all shaven and shorn" to perform the marriage 
 service gratuitously, would have turned up his nose. 
 
 p 2
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 THE SEXAGENAEIAKS. 
 
 The preparation of a dessert is no such very momentous 
 matter, particularly when there are no strawberries to pick, and 
 no grapes to prune with silver scissors or dress with vine-leaves. 
 Mrs. Caesar Donkin, however, considered the daily occasion as one 
 of great importance, and, with the assistance of Puffin, went 
 through it with a considerable amount of state and ceremony. 
 The half-hour before dinner was her time for descantins: on the 
 virtues and the failings of her boarders, for comparing the ex- 
 perience of the past with the occurrences of the present, and for 
 devising those crafty little additions to her monthly bills which 
 redounded so greatly to the credit of her ingenuity, and were by 
 no means unserviceable in swelling her monthly profits. 
 
 " But as for General Tibby, Puffin," Mrs. Ctesar remarked, 
 twisting a raisin which was obviously past service from its stalk, 
 "he must go." 
 
 Puffin, who was polishing a pippin, did not verbally respond to 
 this observation ; but she gave utterance to a plaintive bleat, 
 which may have been either a negative or an affirmative, or 
 nothing at all, as the case stood. 
 
 "Tou mean that you think he ought to go," pursued Mrs. 
 Donkin, quite satisfied as it seemed with the reply. "I can 
 stand him and his carryings-on no longer. The nasty, mean, old 
 hunks ! I wish he'd never come here, that I'm sure I do." 
 
 This time Miss Puffin spake : " He's very old," she timidly 
 ventured to remark, 
 
 "Old!" repeated the boarding-house keeper; "he's as old as 
 the hills. He's one of the screws out of Noah's ark, and as rusty. 
 What's the good of his being old and half-silly, if he's got nothing 
 besides liis half-pay and an annuity which dies with him ? "
 
 THE SEXAGENAllIANS. 213 
 
 Miss Pufl&n winced at the mention of an annuity. It recalled, 
 perhaps, unpleasant reminiscences. 
 
 " His half-pay," Mrs. Donkin continued, in a true philanthropic 
 spirit, " he can't help. JNTot that he ever fought for it, I should 
 imagine. He never went further than Wormwood Scrubbs, you 
 may be sure. But it's his annuity that drives me wild with him. 
 A man who would sink his savings in an annuity, and give up 
 some comfortable thousands in a lump for a paltry six hundred a- 
 year, would poison his grandmother." 
 
 " Ah, that he would ! " acquiesced Miss Puffin, who would have 
 agreed with Mrs. Donkin if she had accused General Tibby of a 
 design to blow up the Houses of Parliament or set the Thames 
 on fire. 
 
 "The man pays punctually enough," Mrs. Donkin was just 
 enough to admit. " But where's the use of his money, if he's got 
 nothing to leave ? He might make his will on the back of a 
 postage-stamp, and his handsomest legacy would be the silver 
 buckle to his stock, his old wig, or his shower-bath. Stop ; he's 
 got a rouge-pot, too, and a hare's-foot. I'm sick and tired of himj 
 Puffin. He gives himself all the airs of a bashaw of three tails. 
 He grumbles at everything. He tastes the milk at breakfast before 
 it goes into his tea, and talks of adulteration. He smells his 
 bread, and says he's sure there are ground bones in it. He finds 
 out my extras and scratches them out. He never offers any- 
 body a glass of wine, though he drinks shamefully : and, worse 
 than all, he takes my gentlemen out at night, and keeps them till 
 two o'clock in the morning at his nasty clubs, smoking and 
 guzzling, I'll be bound. He's half-ruined that poor Mr. 
 Pogo, who was never anything more than a cotton-broker at 
 Liverpool, but always wishes to pass himself off" as a military 
 
 man." 
 
 Prom the tenor of Mrs. Donkin's remarks it may be reasonably 
 inferred that General Tibby was by no means a favourite with 
 that lady. Previous to the discovery of the annuity, indeed, he 
 had held a high place in her estimation. Although convicted of 
 the heinous oftence of having sunk his capital, he might have con- 
 tinued on the footing of an ordinary boarder ; but his most upardon- 
 able crime was the seduction into dissipated ways of the ex-cotton-
 
 214. THE SEVEN SONS OF JVIAMMON. 
 
 broker, Fogo, wlio was very wealthy and had 7iot invested his pro- 
 perty in an annuity. 
 
 " Give Tibby warning," was the sententious advice proffered by 
 Miss Puffin, when her companion had come to the end of her 
 complaints. 
 
 " I must and will," replied Mrs. Ca3sar, " though it's a hard 
 matter to lose something very like two hundred a year. But I 
 can't stand him, Puffin, and that's the truth. He ought to be 
 charged a pound a week for his cough, and another pound for the 
 stupid nonsense he talks, and thirty shillings for the trouble he 
 gives the servants for his baths, and his I don't-know-what's, and 
 then he ought to be hung for an old skin-flint." 
 
 " He's a wretch," Miss Puffin agreed, pensively musing over 
 the plate of figs. 
 
 " Ah," retorted Mrs. Donkin, with some asperity, " it's all 
 very well for you to call him a wretch ; and yet I've heard you 
 flattering the old nuisance up to his very eyes. You shan't sit 
 next to him any more, Puffin." 
 
 " I won't," returned Miss P., with perfect equanimity. 
 
 " "Why don't you try your sheep's eyes upon Mr. Chatwynd,'* 
 Mrs. Donkin resumed, "or upon Mr. Maunder, or on Captain 
 O'Ballygrumble, or on Mr. Tiddydoll, or on that dear, good, kind 
 old creature the Governor ? " 
 
 It may have been intended as a compliment to speak of Mis» 
 Puffin's orbs of vision having any resemblance to sheep's eyes. 
 It would have been nearer the mark to have likened them 
 to those of a lamb sorel}^ afflicted with ophthalmia. To the 
 patient Puffin, however, aU epithets were equally indiffeli-ent. 
 She was the kind of woman whom you could have called a 
 griffin or a hippopotamus without in the least disturbing her 
 tranquillity. 
 
 " Poor old Governor ! " she said softly. 
 
 " Poor old Governor ! . Eich old Governor, 3'ou mean. At all 
 events, if he isn't rich, his daughter must be rolling in money. 
 I believe that if the old gentleman could eat gold, she'd let him 
 have it. She's always bringing him something. She's always mak- 
 ing him presents. She turns the servants' heads with half-crowns 
 and new caps. She's promised me a gold watch from Sensou'&
 
 THE SEXA.GENA11IANS. 215 
 
 on her papa's next birthday. Such a lady as she is too ! such 
 horses and carriages, such diamonds and pearls, and such a dear 
 little duck of a Blenheim spaniel ! " 
 
 " I don't like her," Miss PulEu remarked quietly. 
 
 " That's because you're jealous of her, you mean-spirited 
 thing. You hate her because she's pretty, and has plenty of 
 money, and hasn't a face like a sick rabbit with pink eyes." 
 
 Miss Puffin just raised those same ill-spoken-of eyes to about a 
 level with the scraggy neck of the old woman. 
 
 " She's very kind to her father," she returned, " and does her 
 best to make the Governor liappy ; apart from that, I think — I 
 don't know why, but I'm sure of it — that Mrs. Armytage is 
 a very wicked woman. Her very laugh makes one shudder." 
 
 This was an exceedingly long speech for the ordinarily taciturn 
 Puffin, and she was quite confused with her loquacity ; so, plung- 
 ing into silence she proceeded to carry the plates, two by two, 
 from the room. At this stage, it wanting but ten minutes to 
 dinner-time, it was Mrs. Cissar Donkin's invariable custom to 
 remark that she must really go and make herself tidy. The 
 memory of Puffin ran not to the contrary regarding this remark ; 
 and Mrs, Donkin used duly to disappear to some mysterious 
 chamber in the upper stories which served as her sleeping apart- 
 ment. When she reappeared, her hands were invested with a 
 pair of curiously brown and ragged mittens, in which the fissures 
 of age struggled with the original interstices of the network; 
 and those who were permitted to approach Mrs. Donkin could 
 not avoid an impression, palpable to the olfactory sense, that the 
 completion of her toilette had been in some way assisted by the 
 consumption, either by herself or by her twin-sister, of some 
 alcoholic preparation into which the cordial known as peppermint 
 had entered. 
 
 Miss Puffia took the dessert to the dining-room by easy stages, 
 and had just landed the figs on the sideboard when a double 
 knock of alarming length and resonance echoed through the 
 house. 
 
 For the matter of that, all the boarders knocked loud ; some 
 whose hands were stiff" or chalkstony plied the knocker somewhat 
 tremulously and in uncertain cadence ; but all the sexagenarians
 
 216 THIi SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 did their best to produce sonorous rat-tats. Their strength was 
 in the main but labour and sorrow now; and there was some 
 feeble pleasure to be derived even from the power of knocking a 
 good loud series of reverberations. The ring which passed through 
 the lion's head on the door was good to them, and thundered on 
 its little anvil bravely. Mrs. C?esar Donkin let them knock as 
 vigorously as they could and chose to do. It was an indulgence 
 for which she forbore to charge in the monthly bills. 
 
 The double knock, or rather the personage whose advent it 
 announced, was duly ushered upstairs ; and a few moments after- 
 wards a succession of double knocks more or less resounding was 
 heard, as the old gentlemen came from their clubs, their trots in 
 the Park, and the other amusements they devised for killing their 
 old enemy Time. He it was that most of all they had to fear. 
 Like a usurer who begins to have doubts of the solvency of a 
 spendthrift deep in his books, he exacted heavier and heavier 
 interest for every year of life he granted them ; yet the poor old 
 moths could not help wasting the brief span that remained to 
 them, and puzzled their wits to get rid of the precious moments 
 that Time in his tolerance permitted them still to enjoy. 
 
 Let the venue be changed to the dining-room, an intensely 
 respectable and gloomy apartment of the family-vault order of 
 architecture, the windows of whicli commanded an extensive 
 view of the premises of a statuary opposite, whose front garden 
 was decorated in a lively manner with cenotaphs, broken columns, 
 monumental tablets, garden vases, the Yenus of Milo, the bald- 
 faced stag, the Discobolus, the dog of Alcibiades, the late Mr. 
 AVilberforee, and the late Duke of Wellington. There was the 
 usual sarcophagus wine-cooler under the side-board of the dining- 
 room ; a cheerful bust of a Grecian philosopher with his nose 
 broken off ; and a water-colour view of a building that might have 
 been either a union workhouse, a bSths and washhouses, or a 
 baronial hall, and which seemed to have been borrowed from the 
 fine-arts' gallery of a house-agent. 
 
 A bell that was suggestive of mingled reminiscences of a 
 sexton's tolling for the departing and of the proximity of muffins 
 had been tinkling for some five minutes to warn the inmates of 
 Mrs. Caesar Donkin's establishment that dinner was served ; and
 
 THE SEXAGENARIANS. 217 
 
 at a few minutes after seven the old boys came sliambling and 
 tottering down the staircase from the drawing-room, each with a 
 lady on his arm. 
 
 I have called them for conciseness the Sexagenarians, but it has 
 already been pointed out that while Mrs. Caesar insisted on a mini- 
 mum, she totally ignored the maximum in age. Some of the gentle- 
 men present had passed their seventh, some were rapidly approach- 
 ing their eighth lustre. Old General Tibby, it was clear, would 
 never see seventy- three again. This hero of a hundred field-days 
 was immensely decrepit and fatuous, and as sprightly as his mani- 
 fold infirmities would allow him to be. He was elaborately got 
 up, and there was nothing true about him but his voice, which, 
 as all the paint and padding in the world will not mend flaws in 
 the vocal organ, was cracked and shrill, as beseemed his advanced 
 age. Mr. Togo was not so old by half a score of years, and wore 
 much better. Somethins: of the Lancastrian muscle — of the 
 thew and sinew of the strong men who hail from the back- 
 bone of England, and bulk large, so to speak, in the forefront of 
 English humanity — yet adhered to him. It has already been 
 hinted that this retired and afiluent cotton-broker had a fancy for 
 being mistaken for a military gentleman. It would have been 
 indeed a very great m^istake to assume that he was one ; for 
 ^^ bourgeois" was written in every line of his healthy vacuous 
 countenance ; but, as Mr. Eogo was over six feet high, and had 
 sufficiently broad shoulders, and did not stoop much, he took to 
 wearing a black stock, without any perceptible shirt collar, a 
 blue surtout tightly buttoned up to his throat, and a stripe down 
 either leg of his trowsers. He aftected high heels to his boots 
 likewise, carried a bamboo-cane in one hand, and dangled a stout 
 buckskin glove in the other. He subscribed to the Anni/ List, 
 knew all the military clubs by sight, frequently hovered on their 
 door-steps when there was the slightest shadow of a pretence to 
 ask for one of the members, and would have dearly liked to belong 
 to either of the United Service re-unions, could he have got any 
 one to propose and second him. Before coming to Mrs. Donkin's 
 he had occupied apartments in that great half-pay Patmos St. 
 Alban's Place, Haymarket ; but the red-jackets and crossing- 
 sweepers soon found out that he was no soldier. "When they
 
 218 THE SEVEN SONS OF 3IAMM0N. 
 
 called him "captain" it was ironically, and wheu they touched their 
 ragged caps to him, it was with a sneer. In the end he fled the pur- 
 lieus of the camp in disgust ; but on levee-days he was still to be 
 found haunting the avenues to St. James's and the Horse Guards. 
 He knew all the promotions and appointments in the Gazette; 
 he was familiar with the facings, services, and motto of every 
 regiment in the service ; he was glib in the use of abstruse terms 
 relative to fortifications and military tactics ; and he was an adept 
 at the configuration of a plan of the battle of Waterloo, on the 
 mahogany after dinner : — the positions of the French and allied 
 armies being marked out by meai.s of nut-crackers, bits of orange 
 peel, and thin streaks of port-wine. Beyond this he was perfectly 
 harmless, and paid his way like a gentleman. 
 
 There were altogether eight old men who partook of the 
 dignified hospitality of Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace. Tibby and 
 Fogo you have been already introduced to. Captain O'Bally- 
 grumble's energies — he was seventy — were mainly confined to the 
 endeavour to conceal the fact that he was an Irishman. "When 
 it is mentioned that his appearance was as Hibernian as his name, 
 and that his speech was of the purest Dublin jackeen just racked 
 through a cask of Cork whisky, it is unnecessary to add that his 
 attempt did not succeed. He was called captain — or called him- 
 self so — from having formerly held a commission in a militia 
 regiment. He was a ladies' man, but of the ferocious, not the 
 sentimental order. He bragged much of having blown out the 
 brains of many brothers who objected to the attentions he had 
 paid to their sisters. When a divorce case in high life became a 
 topic of conversation, he was used to wink significantly, and to 
 hint that he could say a great deal more about that "litthle 
 matther" if he chose. He pleaded guilty to the charge of ogling 
 the ladies in Kensington Grardens. The truth is, that he glared 
 at them horribly, brushed past them offensively, and addressed 
 them impertinently, whenever he had an opportunity ; and his 
 dyed whiskers and large white teeth were the terror of well-disposed 
 nursery-maids and young ladies' boarding schools. It was whis- 
 pered that he had been tried in early life for the abduction of an 
 heiress ; and it was known that he had made an offer of marriage 
 to Lady Madapolam, widow of the great City alderman Sir Calli-
 
 THE SEXAGEXAllIANS. 219 
 
 manco Mackpolam, who had over two hundred thousand pounds 
 to her jointure. His suit was scornfully rejected ; but, nothing 
 deterred, O'Ballygrumble followed the lady about from watering- 
 place to watering-place, — from Brighton to Cheltenham, from 
 Nice to Aix-la-Chapelle, — pursuing her with his odious attentions. 
 The lady had been foolish enough to send a few curt replies to the 
 oceans of love-letters with which he inundated her ; and his last 
 coup was to threaten to publish all the correspondence that had 
 passed between them. After this, it was said that Lady Mada- 
 polam — whose servants, male and female, he had alternately 
 cajoled and caned into his interest — had bought her persecutor 
 ofi" with a handsome annual allowance. The good lady didn't 
 require a second husband. Slie spent her dividends very comfort- 
 ably in eating and di-inking, in pills and potions, — she was known 
 to every JPharmacien Anglais from the Seine to the Danube ; in 
 foniiiug a library of theological literature ; in subscribing to 
 charitable associations for recondite philanthropic purposes, and 
 which generally, after the third annual dinner, ended by the 
 secretary's absconding, and the whole aifair turning out to be a 
 gross swindle and imposition. The respected name of Lady Mada- 
 polam headed the subscription to the Infant Hottentot's Gra- 
 tuitous Hockey-Stick and Tip-cat Distribution Society, in con- 
 nection with the .Additional Knife and Fork and Digestive Pill 
 Aid to Destitute Cannibals Association. Friendly George Gaf- 
 ferer was in the last-named bubble. George was Sec. pro tem.y 
 and laid the foundations of many future dinner-invitations among 
 his private friends by distributing gratuitous tickets among them 
 for the first grand festival at the Freemasons' Tavern. The Gaf- 
 ferer was great while the society lasted. He was wont to boast 
 of his "interest with the Press," and absolutely procured the 
 insertion of a ten-line paragraph in the WeeJcly Cad newspaper, 
 in which the pressing claims of the destitute cannibals, more 
 especially in the Fee-jee and Cruel Islands, to a large supply of 
 knives, forks, and Cockle's pills were dwelt upon. " Shall these 
 embyro Christians," asked the paragraph (" erabyro " was a good 
 term, and told immensely), " die of indigestion ? Missionaries 
 are well known to be tough. Who would refuse the poor cannibal 
 his knife, his fork, and his pill-box ? " 0' Howler wrote the above
 
 220 THE SEYEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 glowing Hues, and lived at free quarters on the charity for a month 
 afterwards. ^Friendly George Gafferer constituted himself into a 
 committee of taste, and delivered some opinions most valuable in 
 an epicurean point of view, when asked into the har-parlour of the 
 Freemasons', and regaled, free of expense, with turtle-soup for 
 lunch, peculiar Madeira, and choice Eegalias. A good soul George 
 Gafferer, and nobody's friend but his own. 
 
 But Captain 'Bally grumble has been left in the lurch while I 
 have been digressing upon George Gafferer. (The Additional Aid 
 Society turned out to be an awful delusion ; and it was with 
 difficulty that the Treasurer and Sec. p^o tern, escaped legal pro- 
 ceedings.) The Captain was en retraiie now, and lived gaily 
 enough upon his property, whencesoever it may have proceeded. 
 He said that he bore Lady Madapolam no malice ; but that he 
 had been " skyaudalously throated throughout the affair, and 
 that she would have done much better to marry a Milesian gen- 
 tleman of ancient descent, than to spend thousands in building 
 churches where they were not wanted." Such was the Captain. 
 He would have been very much like the bragging and fortune- 
 hunting Irishman so familiar to us on the stage, had he not been 
 the very image of the bragging and fortune-hunting Irishman we 
 see off the stage and in real life. 
 
 Mr. Chatwynd was very old, thin, silent, gentlemanly, and in- 
 offensive. He was known to be rich, to be a member of the 
 Society of Antiquaries, and of the Travellers' Club. Second- 
 hand booksellers and dealers in mediaeval wares were continually 
 sending him catalogues by post. He had chambers in Staple 
 Inn, Holborn, where he was supposed to possess a magnificent 
 collection of pictures, busts, gems, China, and rare editions. 
 Beyond a ^habit of taking snufi' at dinner time, and an abhorence 
 of fat meat, he had no very remakable peculiarities. 
 
 The rest of the old men, with one exception, claim no special 
 notice. They were nonentities. They wheezed and grumbled, 
 they coughed and cooned, they hemmed and hawed, and oc- 
 casionally drivelled. They were frightened at the ferocity of 
 Captain O'Ballygrumble, and awed by the quiet contempt of Mr. 
 Chatwynd, who, for all his ripe age, was erect and valid, and was 
 known to be a person of superior attainments. Their conversation
 
 THE SEXAGENARIANS. 221 
 
 was the very baldest chat. Take away tlieir clothes, and chains 
 and rings, their well-spread table, and soft couches, and there was 
 not much to choose between these ancients and the frieze-clad 
 dotards you see warming their wafer-like palms over the stoves in 
 the old man's ward of a workhouse. It was not good to look 
 upon them, either when they were solitary, and doddered about 
 in blank search of their health and their memory, or when meat had 
 warmed them into active munching and slavering, or drink had 
 made them garrulous. Poor old men, where were they all going ? 
 There was nothing about them to remind him who considered 
 them of those reverend hermits of old, who dwelt in caves and fed 
 on roots, and prayed continually. They were all self-indulgent* 
 and, most of them, sordidly avaricious. The coarse dirty old 
 ^\oman who ruled over the house rather frightened than persuaded 
 them out of their money. A greedy old man needs often to be 
 terrified with stripes as though he were a greedy schoolboy ; and 
 not one of Mrs. Donkin's boarders could stand the lashings of her 
 tongue. Eor the rest, they were tlie kind of dilapidated gentle- 
 men you see wandering about Pall Mall and the Opera Colonnade 
 on warm afternoons ; who leer into the milliners' shops in the 
 Burlington Arcade, and the pastrycook's at the Eegent Circus, 
 and sometimes totter through the Pantheon Bazaar to the con- 
 servatory, where the macaws and cockatoos scream at them. And 
 more than one of Mrs. Cresar Donkin's boarders were, it is to be 
 feared, very wicked old boys indeed. But "the Grovernor " ? 
 AVho was he ? what was he like ? and how came he by the guber- 
 natorial title ? you may ask. The Governor was the oldest in- 
 mate of the caravanserai in Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace. Indeed, 
 he was an old, old man, and venerable to look upon. His silky, 
 snowy locks flowed down his shoulders ; his linen was scrupulously 
 clean and white ; and through his great infirmities, ho was per- 
 mitted by Mrs. Donkin to appear at the dinner-table in his dres- 
 sing gown and slippers. When be spoke, his speech was gentle, 
 courteous, and dignified ; but he was, perforce, not very talkative 
 for he^was almost entirely deaf; and his reverend head was gar- 
 nished with a pair of ear-trumpets, secured by elastic bands round 
 his white forehead, and which in their convolutions reminded one 
 of a ram of the highest respectability and the greatest antiquity.
 
 222 THE SEVEN SONS OF JMAlIMON. 
 
 He was so feeble tliat when his daughter was not present to assist 
 him he had to be wheeled in and out of the dining-room in an 
 arm-chair, and he was propped up by pillows during the repast. 
 He rose very late, breakfasted in his room, and retired to rest very 
 early. He was continually visited by eminent physicians. A most 
 handsome stipend was paid for his lodging and maintenance ; Mrs. 
 Caesar Donkin was devoted to him ; and even the undemonstrative 
 Puffin showed how much she was interested in him. Often the 
 Governor would say, in his refined and dignified manner, that, but 
 "for his great age and infirmities, nothing would aflbrd him 
 greater gratification than to oflTer his hand to a virtuous and well- 
 conducted young woman, who could bring herself to cheer the 
 winter of an old man's days." At this the sensitive Puffin would 
 tremble, and grow pale and red by turns ; and then, mustering up 
 courage, she woidd shout into one of the ear-trumpets, that he 
 had plenty more years before him, and that Dr. Sardonix's good 
 care would speedily restore him to health and strength. At which 
 the Governor would shake his head with an expression of resigned 
 negation. 
 
 Yes : Dr. Sardonix attended the Governor. He talked every- 
 where of his patience under sufiering, his amiable disposition, and 
 his distinguished manners. A true gentleman, the doctor declared 
 him to be, and one of the old school. He extolled the filial devo- 
 tion of the Governor's daugliter to the skies. "It is true," the 
 doctor would say, " that the brilliant position which Mrs. Armytage 
 fills in society frequently calls her abroad : but no sooner does she 
 arrive in England, than she flies, literally flies, my dear sir, — to 
 the side of her venerated parent. Ah, what a daughter ! what a 
 model for all daughters, high and low ! " 
 
 " I am glad there is some good in that artful and designing 
 creature," Miss Magdalen Hill once chose to remark when the 
 name of the detested widow was mentioned and her filial piety 
 eulogised. 
 
 " Artful and designing ! " the doctor echoed, holding up his 
 white hands in well-simulated a&tonishment. " Come, come, let 
 us not be too hard upon this most charming of butterflies, — this 
 most seductive of gilded moths." 
 
 "Say serpents, doctor," poor Lady Goldthorpe chimed in.
 
 THE SEXAGENARIANS. 223 
 
 *' She's a nasty hypocritical rattlesnake. I never could a-bear 
 the creature, with her flv-bv-niwht curls. I wish they were 
 false ; but they ain't, I know, and mere's the pity. I tell you 
 she's no good. Years ago, when my poor dear dead darling Hugh 
 came back from India on his leave, and stopped in Paris, that 
 woman tried to wind him round her finger. I found one of her 
 yellow curls in his cigar-case once — " 
 
 " Mamma ! " Magdalea expostulated, with a warning finger, a 
 blush, and a sigh. 
 
 " Ton may call her anything you like, dear ladies," the discreet 
 physician would remark ; " but what would you have ? She is a 
 woman of the world. She occupies the exceptional and invidious 
 place of a rich and pretty — well, not pretty, but engaging — widow. 
 She belongs to Vanity Pair, dear Lady Goldthorpe. Surely you 
 remember the charming character of Becky Sharpe." 
 
 "No," the simple lady replied; "I never read no novels. I 
 had a maid called Becky Sharpe once, and she ran away with three 
 bottles of eau-de-cologne, a true lover's knot brooch,, and all the 
 silver stoppers ofi" the bottles in my dressing-case, let alone a pair 
 of laced sleeves and a false character she left behind her. Her 
 name turned out to be — when Sir Jasper transported her, — not 
 Sharpe at all, but Bowdler." 
 
 " I,' ' Magdalen said, rising at this stage of the colloquy, " have 
 read the wonderful drama of human lite to which Dr. Sardonix 
 refers. Unless I am mistaken, Becky Sharpe was in the end found 
 out. It may be that the same fate will happen, some day or 
 another, to this pattern and paragon of filial piety, whose name I 
 disdain to recall." 
 
 It is said that when people are talking about us our ears burn- 
 I wonder which one it is, the right or the left, that tingles and 
 feels hot when people are talking against us. It is well that the 
 little widow had curls ; for giving one ear to the men, and ap- 
 propriating another to the women, what flandng lobes Mrs. Army- 
 tage must have had from morning till night underneath those 
 shining locks of hers ! 
 
 Had she known, or did she divine half the evil that was spoken 
 against her, she would not have deviated from the path of duty 
 she had traced out for herself regarding her papa. Her behaviour
 
 224 THE SEVEN SONS OP ^LAJDION. 
 
 towards him was more than amiable, more than admirable : it was 
 incomparable. Mrs. Caesar Donkin looked upon her as the an- 
 cients might have looked upon the Grecian daughter, or the Sans- 
 culottes of the Eeign of Terror upon the young lady who drank 
 a glass of blood to save her father from the scaffold. Puffin, to 
 be sure, disparaged her ; but then Puffin had her motives. Perhaps 
 Magdalen had her motives also, but she was too haughty to own 
 them. The chest of that young person's thoughts closed with a 
 spring, the key was lost, and the thoughts mouldered into skeletons 
 within. 
 
 The Governor took the homage and the afflsction of which be 
 was the object with his unvarying and dignified serenity. He was 
 good enough to express to Mrs. Donkin his belief that in the 
 whole world there was not such another daughter to be found as his 
 Florence ; beyond that admission he suffered himself to be loved 
 se laissait aimer, and repaid the almost idolatory which was lavished 
 on him with beaming smiles, of which he had, to all appearance, an 
 inexhaustible stock. It was doubtful why he was called " the 
 Governor," what he had governed, or where had been the seat of 
 his government. He was too fine a gentleman to be asked im- 
 pertinent questions, even if he had not been too deaf to answer 
 them. He had had something to do with the colonies — with the 
 "West India Islands, it was generally understood. A chance 
 reference to Tobago had once been dropped byhis daughter. Was 
 he the original 
 
 " Old man of Tobago, 
 
 TVLo lived on rice, sugar, and sago, 
 Till the doctor one day 
 Unto liim diJ say, 
 
 To a roast leg of mutton you may go ?" 
 
 Xo one could give an opinion with certainty as to this important 
 question. It was, however, generally agreed that he was not only 
 wealthy himself but the cause of wealth in others ; to wit, in his 
 daughter, whom he had splendidly dowered, and who was the 
 widow besides of an Indian officer of large means. Mrs. Donkin 
 had 'lost her faith in affluent Orientals. The remembrance of the 
 perfidy of Jaghire was a wound not yet healed; but even she did 
 not refuse to place credence in the many lacs of repees left to his 
 relict by Major Armytage.
 
 THE SEXAGENARIANS. 225 
 
 It must appear to the reader that while these personal matters 
 were under discussion the ancient boarders of Bergen-op-Zoom 
 Terrace have been kept waiting an unconscionably long time for 
 their dinners ; and they were crusty old gentlemen, believe me, 
 who resented even a three minutes' delay in the appearance of the 
 soup. Be not alarmed, however ; while we have been wandering 
 from the Governor to the G-oldthorpes, and from Bergen-op-Zoom 
 Terrace to Onyx Square,— there was not a mile distance between 
 the boarding-house and the palace of Mammon,— Mrs. Cffisar Don- 
 kin's pensionnaires have been proceeding with their repast as well 
 as ever their teeth and their trembling hands would let them. 
 They have had soup; they have had fish— brill, falsely called 
 turbot, at the top, skate at the bottom ; they have had entrees— 
 Pshaw ! whv should I give vou the entire bill of fare ? It is 
 enough to say that the entire banquet was a capital imitation of a 
 first-rate dinner, but that it was in reality a very bad one. There 
 was plenty of electro-plate about, epergnes filled with artificial 
 flowers, chased vases for the champagne — which, out of compliment 
 to the ladies, was provided in turns by the old gentlemen, — filigree 
 bread-baskets, finger-glasses, table-napkins, a battered old waiter 
 full of weak rose-water, passed round after the cheese, — all the 
 paraphernalia, in llict, of an expensive and well-served feast. All 
 that was wanting were good meats and vegetables. Herein lay 
 the profit of Mrs. Csesar Donkin, and herein was displayed her 
 ingenuity and state-craft. The rose-water didn't cost a farthing a 
 day, the electro-plate wore well, the artificial flowers were in per- 
 ennial bloom, the table-napkins were washed, like every article of 
 linen in the establishment, by the dozen, and surely finger-glasses 
 are cheap enough ! Altogether, however, these odds-and-ends of 
 good society made a brave show. It was the style that did it, Mrs. 
 Donkin said ; and even those who came away hungry from her 
 symposia admitted that she certainly did give very stylish dinners. 
 With a judicious and discriminating use of style, you may do 
 almost everything in this sublunary world. In letters you may 
 conceal your ignorance and your dullness, — in art you may atone 
 for imperfect drawing and clumsy manipulation, — in the concerns 
 of domestic life you may hide half your meannesses and shab- 
 binesses, by artful recourse to style. For it is an impalpable 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 powder whicli, when dexterously tlirown in. the eyes of mankind, 
 affects them with a happy blindness. 
 
 There : the clatterinc; of knives and forks is over. A remark- 
 able cheese, very much like a dilapidated drum, and coming, it is 
 to be suspected, from North Wiltshire, but which Mi's. Caesar 
 Doukin's stylishness caused to do duty as a Stilton, has been re- 
 moved. The grand cut-glass stand, with three lamentable forked 
 sprigs of celery drooping from it, and the little pellet of butter, 
 with its elaborate knife of electro ware, have been handed round ; 
 the cloth has been drawn, as the reporters write of public dinners ; 
 the famous dessert has been pnt on the table ; the decanters of 
 port or claret belonging to each boarder, and each labelled with 
 his name, have been produced from the recesses of the sideboard ; 
 and the Sexagenarians begin to enjoy themselves. They are but 
 a feeble folk, and scant of that breath from a total want 'of which 
 they must all, at no very distant period, perish. Gras nobis, my 
 hearty companions ; — and the conversation is rather by fits and 
 starts than sustained ; but there is a little squabble now and then, 
 and perhaps a weak morsel of love-making ; and these relieve the 
 monotony of the chatter. 
 
 Love-making ? Yes, madam ; and that reminds the narrator 
 of a serious error of omission. It is customary, I am aware, at 
 public banquets to make the toast of "the ladies" one of, if not 
 the very last of, the evening. There is surely no need in private 
 life to be so ungallant ; so with the • first glass of wine, if you 
 please, let us look towards the ladies, and evince a due solicitude 
 for their very good health. I bow towards the end of the 
 table where sits Mrs. Caesar Donkin, lookins: more like a witch 
 than ever. Beyond the mittens, Mrs. Donkin scorned to make 
 any alteration in her toilette, even on the most festive occasions. 
 The Sexagenarians feared her too much to remonstrate. Miss 
 Pufiin, indeed, spruced herself up to the extent of putting on 
 over her faded larege a black silk jacket, which in a strong light 
 showed reflections of an orange tawney hue, and which was cur- 
 rently reported to have been made out of a hatband presented to 
 her grandfather on the occasion of his attending the obsequies of 
 the late lamented Marquis of Granby. But Mrs. Ctesar Donkin 
 and Miss Puffin were not tlie only members of their charming
 
 THE SEXAGENAPJANS. 227 
 
 sex who graced the dinner-table. There were lady boarders in 
 Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace. For example, on the left of Greneral 
 Tibby — the post of his right being occupied by Puffin — sat old 
 Mrs. Vanderpant, widow of a former consul at the port of Bristol 
 of his majesty the king of the Netherlands. She was very fat, 
 she was very good-tempered. From whatever part of Holland 
 she came, it could not have been from the clean village of Brock, 
 near Amsterdam ; for she did not show the slightest distaste to 
 Mrs. Caesar Doukin's slatternliness. Mrs. Yanderpant had a 
 comfortable pension paid to her quarterly by a Dutch house in 
 the cheese and butter trade in Trinity Square, and in which her 
 deceased husband had held a share. She walked resolutely every 
 Sunday morning to the old Dutch church in Austin Friars, 
 returning in a cab, and always having a terrific dispute with the 
 driver on the question of sixpence. First she refused to pay him; 
 then she offered him some of the minor coinage of the Low 
 Countries, which she kept by her in a wash-leather bag; then 
 she abused him roundly in Dutch ; finally, she paid him, slammed 
 the door in his face, drank two glasses of cherry-brandy, informed 
 any one who might be present that all cabmen were "tam tieves," 
 and went to bed until dinner-time. There was little variety in 
 her life ; but beyond an ugly word (imperfectly pronounced, 
 which may have divested it of some of its sinfulness) there was no 
 harm in Mrs. Vanderpant. 
 
 Captain 0' Bally grumble, wlio was croupier, — Mr. Caesar Don- 
 kin never putting in an appearance at meal- times, — had for right 
 hand neighbour a countrywoman of his own. Miss MacShandrydan 
 (of the Shandrydans of Booterstown) ; while his attentions to the 
 left were due to Miss Bubb. Alethea MacShandrydan was fifty, 
 and an invalid. She suffered from chronic sickness. IS'ot love- 
 sickness ; there was but one person in the world for whom Miss 
 MacShandrydan cared one potato-peeling, and that was herself. 
 Not bodily sickness ; she was as strong as a grenadier, and had as 
 fine an appetite as the celebrated bold dragoon, " with his long 
 sword, saddle, bridle, O," of the ballad. She was simply sick, and 
 nearly sick to death with affectation. She had shone many years 
 before in a kind of meteoric gleam of the reflex of the reflection 
 of the Irish viceregal court. The shadow of one of the Lord- 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 THE SEVEN SOXS OF MAMMOX. 
 
 Lieutenant's footmen had once crossed hev path, and made her 
 aristocratic for ever. She was Saekville Street at secondhand, 
 a washed-out 'Westmoreland Street, a faded Phantom of the 
 Phoenix Park. She made you very nearly as sick as she was 
 herself with lier meagre prattle ahout " the Kyastle " and the 
 "Juke of Eichmond's aid-du-cong's." She called a street cab 
 " a [floy," and asked people what the inside of an omnibus was 
 like. The old hypocrite! She was the bane and torment of 
 every cad between the Marble Arch and Charing Cross. She 
 was so affected that she could scarcely speak, and, although she 
 had a fine native brogue of her own, lisped, and chewed her silly 
 words, marching as mincingly in her speech as Agag on the earth, 
 and driving irritable people to meditate the hewing of her in 
 pieces, even as it befel Agag. 
 
 She had just enough money to pay her expenses in Bergen-op- 
 Zoom Terrace, and to buy portraits of crowned heads and of the 
 higher nobility at the secondhand-print shops. Her bed-chamber 
 was hung round with pale effigies of his late H.R.H. the Duke of 
 Gloucester, George the Pourth in a brown jasey and silk-covered 
 pianoforte legs, the Earl of Liverpool, and the Hetman Platoff. 
 She had a large wardrobe, which Mrs. Donkin greedily coveted, 
 and of which the shawls, dresses, laces, and other woman's frip- 
 pery, might have made a somewhat handsome appearance at cer- 
 tain Castle levees and theatrical command nights in Dublin early 
 in the century. She always bought the Eed-Book of the year 
 before last cheap ; and, so far as you could understand her for 
 lisping, was fond of dilating on the claims of her brother Hercules 
 MacShandrydan, " kinnected with the Governmhent," to the dor- 
 mant peerage of Derrymacash. Captain 0' Bally grumble hated 
 her with a fierce and implacable loathing, and declared that she 
 had never been anything more than a governess in a day-school 
 at Dunleary, and that Hercules her brother had first been a tithe- 
 proctor, and next an exciseman, and was now a retired sergeant 
 in the constabulary. 
 
 Miss Bubb was of English extraction. Slie made no secret of 
 the fact of her family being connected with that branch of com- 
 merce involving a traffic in grocery. Don't you remember Bubb 
 and Grubb, family tea-dealers, at the Golden Biggin in Oxford
 
 THE SEXAGENAIIIA>'S. 229 
 
 Street? It was Bubb who introduced the "Efflorescent Gun- 
 powder at Two and Eleven," by selling which (in four-pound 
 packages) he realised a fortune. Matilda Bubb had in early life 
 made up many parcels ; but the sugar of her career was sanded 
 by the treachery of a shopman, who made violent love to her, and 
 actually proposed, but, finding that old Bubb would give nothing 
 down to his daughter, married Miss Pruin of the Golden Caddy, 
 the opposition grocer's directly opposite ; and by dint of puffing 
 advertisements, plate-glass, an electro-plated coffee-mill with a 
 working steam-engine, and a vast display of cartoons representing 
 the cultivation and preparation of the fragrant herb as pursued 
 by the natives in the interior of China, succeeded in depriving 
 Bubb and Grubb of nineteenths of their customers. Old Bubb, 
 however, dying, left his only daughter a corpulent independence; 
 and Matilda was scarcely out of her mourning ere she had the 
 gratification of seeing her fuitliless swain made condignly bank- 
 rupt. He fled to Tasmania, without a certificate, and with inci- 
 pient delirium tremens, and his wife was compelled to take in 
 needlework for a livelihood. Such is very frequently the end 
 of plate-glass windows, electro-plated coffee-mills, and Chinese 
 cartoons. 
 
 Miss Bubb was the only boarder in Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace 
 who kept a carriage — a roomy old fly of the glass-coach order. 
 She was verj' soft, impressionable, and, in a melancholy manner, 
 good-humoured. She read sentimental novels from morning to 
 night. She nourished a long and pensive curl of an ashen hue 
 by the side of either wan cheek, and her left eye was a glass one. 
 Poor Miss Bubb ! 
 
 The two Misses Cherrygo would have been exceedingly annoyed 
 if you had not taken notice of them ; but really there was little 
 in their persons or character to call, in this place at least, for 
 extended notice. They were middle-aged twins, who dressed 
 alike, and wore their hair alike, and frequently had their arms 
 round one another's waists. They sang duets together at the 
 piano in the drawing-room. They went shopping together. In 
 fact, they were inseparable. Old Cherrygo, their papa, who had 
 formerly been connected in some manner with the Commissariat, 
 and was said to owe the major part of his handsome competence
 
 S30 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 to successful malversations in bullocks and ruin, — to him was 
 attributed the celebrated mot, that "for a forlorn hope there's 
 nothing like fasting," — had formerly occupied apartments beneath 
 Mrs. Donkin's roof. He had the egregious folly and baseness 
 to go away and marry a designing creature who kept a fancy 
 repository in Praed Street, Paddington, and who, I am delighted 
 to say, made his married life one continuous series of aggravated 
 assaults on her part. Is not the case of Cherrygo versus Cherrygo 
 even now down for trial before Sir Cresswell Cresswell, and is 
 not the vrretched old Commissary seeking a judicial separation on 
 the ground of cruelty ? When he left Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace, 
 a reprobate and a deceiver, this elderly outcast formally disin- 
 herited his daughters. The lady who kept the fancy repository is 
 said, indeed, to have declared to a confidential charwoman, on the 
 very eve of their bridal, that the daughters of that old fool should 
 never darken her doors. Fortunately the Misses Cherrygo were 
 not destitute. An uncle, who had made a nice little fortune 
 during the great war by buying up sailors' claims to prize-money 
 at a discount of about seventy-five per cent., bequeathed his 
 virtuous savings to his nieces, and they had quite enough to live 
 upon. The Misses Cherrygo passed, then, a quiet and tranquil 
 life, alternately executing elaborate chair-covers in Berlin wool, 
 and abusing the abandoned Commissary their papa. To that 
 same Berlin wool must be ascribed, as a first cause, .their aliena- 
 tion from a never fond but still convenient parent. Had they 
 never requested the elder Cherrygo to call at the repository in 
 Praed Street, for the purpose of matching two shades of orange 
 and one of purple, he would probably have never seen Miss Brown- 
 make, the designing person who subsequently became his wife. 
 
 These were all the lady boarders. Mrs. Donkin made no stipu- 
 lation as to their age, and even charged them less for their board 
 than she did the gentlemen. The ladies were useful to her. It 
 was part of J\Irs. Donkin's policy so to contrive matters that every 
 Sexagenarian should be in love with at least one, if not two, of 
 her female inmates. Most of them fell into Cupid's trap easily 
 enough. Chatwynd, indeed, was shy and reticent ; but he was so 
 quiet, and in every way so desirable a lodger, that his want of 
 susceptibility was overlooked. Captain O'BaUygrumble made
 
 THE SEXAGENARIANS. 231 
 
 love to the ladies all round, when he was in a good temper, and 
 always excepting Miss Shandrydan; and as for the poor old 
 Governor, it quite suited Mrs. Csesar Donkin's piu'pose that all 
 he had to do with love should be in enjoying the worship of his 
 daughter. 
 
 She, the daughter, Mrs. Armytage, was the guest this evening. 
 She often came to dine. She liked to sit next to her darling papa. 
 She complimented Mrs. Donkin. She complimented the ladies. 
 She complimented the gentlemen. There was little individual 
 love-making on the days she came, for all the Sexagenarians were 
 wild after Mrs. Armytage, and their homage was centred in 
 her. Curiously the older ladies were not jealous of her. She 
 seemed to be so dazzling, so accomplished, so distinguished, as to 
 belong quite to another world. She could not, it was argued, be 
 setting her cap at any of these poor worn-out, creeping, chattering, 
 dotards. If her aim was wealthy caducity, she might marry a 
 gouty marquis, or a paralytic duke, if she liked. The Governor 
 was good enough to remark one day that his daughter had refused 
 the Russian Ambassador to a foreign Court, who was the owner 
 of half the Ukraine, and half the peasants living thereupon. 
 " But," continued the Governor, " my beloved Florence will never 
 form a fresh alliance so long as her poor old father lives." So the 
 little lady was highly popular in Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace, and 
 was a queen there, as she was everywhere else, save in a certain 
 dingy chamber in Coger's Inn, Strand, and a certain mouldy back 
 kitchen in Badger-lane, Stockwell. Aha ! what king, what queen 
 may there be, I wonder, who in some place or another is not 
 reckoned of any more account than a beggar, and, with a crown 
 on head and sceptre in hand, has not to eat the humblest of humble 
 pie ? 
 
 The Governor did not stay long over his wine. He drank three 
 glasses of sound old port-wiue, of which he always kept an abun- 
 dant store, and which he or his daughter freely dispensed to the 
 company in general, and to Mrs. Donkin in particular. It was not 
 his custom to join the ladies in the drawing-room. He was too 
 much of an invalid to bear so much fatigue. It was a very beau, 
 tiful and interesting sight to see his tottering steps directed to 
 the door by his devoted daughter. She always assisted him to his
 
 232 THE SEVEN SONS OJ MAMMON. 
 
 bedchamber ; and the parent and child passed an hour or so in 
 the solace of cheerful and innocent conversation, before tlie good 
 old Governor retired to rest. He was unusually feeble on this 
 present evening, and leant on his daughter's arm with unusual 
 pressure. All the Sexagenarians rose as the pair took their de- 
 parture ; and even the ferocious O'Ballgrumble rushed to the 
 door, and held it obsequiously open. 
 
 " "What a charming creature ! " mumbled (reneral Tibby. 
 
 " A model daughter," sighed Mr. Bowdler. 
 
 " Adoosed fine woman," remarked Mr. Fogo, in his peremptory 
 military voice. 
 
 The ladies joined their little twitterings in the chorus of applause^ 
 and, when they reached the drawing-room, proceeded to criticise 
 Mrs. Armytage's jewellery, her lace, her flounces, and her ringlets. 
 There was but oue voice heard in disparagement, and that was, 
 oddly, from good-natured Mrs. Vanderpant. 
 
 "I not like her laugh, he, he! " the good lady remarked, sinking 
 on a sofa ; " and, 'pon my word, I tink she paint." 
 
 The Governor occupied a large and commodious bedchamber on 
 the second-floor. He had furnished it himself, and, as this involved 
 no diminution of Mrs. Doukin's usual charges, that lady was quite 
 content to allow him to furnish it in what manner he pleased. It 
 was by no means an uncomfortable apartment, and, to judge from 
 the number of books and papers scattered about, the Governor 
 was a gentleman of studious, if not literary pursuits. 
 
 Florence led the old man into this chamber, and, until they had 
 passed the very threshold, he continued to totter, and she to guide 
 his footsteps, looking up in his face meanwhile with an expression 
 of the tenderest solicitude. They were no sooner inside the door 
 however, and that door was no sooner closed upon them, and care- 
 fully locked, than a very remarkable change took place in the 
 demeanour both of Mrs. Florence Armytage and of her venerable 
 papa. She was no longer the Grecian daughter, the modern Ma- 
 demoiselle de Sombreuil, ready to quaff" a glass of blood as though 
 it were one of Chateau Lafitte to redeem the head of her papa 
 from the glaive of the guillotine. She became, with electric ra- 
 pidity, our own familiar Mrs. Armytage, the fascinating widow,, 
 the laughing tenant of the first-floor in the Eue Grande-des-
 
 THE SEXAGENARIANS.^ S3 
 
 Petites-Maisons — the airy, saucy, debotmaire little creature, ^vliO 
 was wont to shake her sunny ringlets and play with her lap-dog. 
 Her pathetic veneration for the Governor had all vanished ; not 
 an iota was left of her affectionate solicitude. She dropped liis arm 
 without the slightest ceremony, and tripping to a large easy-chair, 
 flung herself on to the cushions, and laughed long and heartily in 
 her old, merry, satirical, desperately-wicked fashion. 
 
 But if the change that had occurred in this pattern of filial af- 
 fection was sudden and astonishing, not less speedy and peculiar 
 was that which came over the respected gentleman who was dig- 
 nified with the name of Governor. The deformed became all at 
 once transformed, and Mr. Hartley Livingstone, who had entered 
 the room a confirmed valetudinarian, to whom the seldom-erring 
 judgment of Mrs. Donkin would have given at least seventy-seven 
 years, sat down in an arm-chair opposite his daughter, a hale, 
 strong, personable man to all appearance short of fifty years of 
 age. For he had plucked off" his flowing white locks ; he had cast 
 aside his ram-like ear-trumpets ; he had discarded his green shade ; 
 he had divested his neck of its thick swathings of linen. His 
 halt, his hobble, and his stoop had all disappeared ; and he sat 
 grinning with a remarkably fine set of even white teeth, a pair of 
 gleaming hazel eyes, and a closely-cropped bullet-head of crisp 
 black hair. It was the story of iSixtus the Fifth over again ; and 
 the perfidy of Jaghire was repeated, with five hundred per cent. 
 in its audacious deception added. 
 
 The first act of this metamorphosed patriarch was to produce 
 from a cheffbnier a black bottle and a glass, and to mix himself a 
 comfortably stiff" glass of brandy-and-water. He next opened a 
 cigar-case, and, producing a fine havannah, lighted and proceeded 
 to smoke it, with an aspect of cheerful deliberation. 
 
 "My medical attendants recommend the use of the aromatic 
 herb tobacco for the poor old Governor," he remarked, with a 
 coarse laugh, entirely different from his former calmly-dignified 
 manner. " Nobody but the invalid Governor is allowed to smoke 
 in this house ; but he pays so well, that the Witch of Endor would 
 allow him to walk on the ceiling, or have a brass band at the 
 window, if it was agreeable to him. He does what he likes, the 
 interesting old sufferer. Ho, ho ! "
 
 234 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 TLe man's laugli was inexpressibly repulsive. He seldom spoke 
 without a hard metallic " Ho, ho ! " as a refrain. It was his 
 daughter's laugh in its crude and rugose stage ; — his was the vocal 
 bronze to her shining silver. He had a habit, too, of speaking of 
 himself in the third person, of flattering himself grossly, and of 
 slapping his large thigh, which by no means enhanced the geniality 
 of his manner. 
 
 " He drinks the best and smokes the best, the poor old 
 Governor does," he went on. " Legs and. feet, what a start 
 it is!" 
 
 " He smokes very strong tobacco and drinks more than is good 
 for him," his daughter — yes, she was his daughter — replied; 
 "and in private life resembles Gallows Dick the bushranger 
 much more than Mr. Hartley Livingstone, sometime Member of 
 Council at St. Kitts, and said to have been Governor of Nevis." 
 
 " It wasn't Nevis," broke in the Governor, " it was Tobago. 
 They all say it was Tobago, down-stairs. Ho ! ho ! and it was at 
 Demerara, not at St. Kitts, that I exercised legislative functions 
 as a member of the Court of Policy. "Won't you have a little 
 drop of something that'll do you good, Flo ?" 
 
 To a third person — if such a third had been present at this 
 interview — there could not have been from the outset the slightest 
 doubt that Mr. Hartley Livingstone of the West Indies, or 
 Gallows Dick of the bush, or the Governor of Bergen-op-Zoom 
 Terrace, Bayswater, was an undisguised and unmitigated Euffian. 
 Villain and ruffian, coarse, low, cunning, and unscrupulous, were 
 written in every line of his perfectly healthy face. Withal the 
 man's eyes glistened with an ardent, devouring, almost savage 
 love and admiration for his daughter. Their positions were 
 reversed. He no longer suffered himself to be loved, as at the 
 dinner-table. 'Twas she who endured endearment, and, to do 
 Mrs. Armytage justice, she took all her papa's affection in a 
 philosophical if not a demonstrative spirit. 
 
 Just then there came a little knock at the door.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 EYE or THE DELUGE. 
 
 Theee were fortunately two doors to the Governor's bed- 
 chamber, and the place was as secure from intrusion as the 
 sanctum of Mr. Sims in Coger's Inn. Mr. Livingstone being 
 very subject to colds, was necessarily very much afraid of 
 draughts ; and he had not only carefully listed and sand-bagged 
 the top and bottom of the outer door, but, at his own expense, 
 had fitted up an inner portal, covered with green baize. Those 
 who knocked had to use their knuckles pretty freely before the 
 sound penetrated to the chamber itself. 
 
 Mrs. Armytage rose at the summons, went to the door, and in 
 a few moments returned. 
 
 " It was the woman of the house," she said, reseating herself. 
 
 " What ! the AYitch of Endor ? What did the old sorceress 
 want?" 
 
 " She asked some idle question about gruel, or foot-baths, or 
 something equally trivial. She is always prowling and prying 
 about. Do you think it is mere old woman's curiosity, or do you 
 imagine that she suspects anything?" 
 
 " She had better not suspect anything," replied Mr. Hartley 
 Livingstone, with a very grim and significant leer. " I don't 
 think she would have many more opportunities for indulging her 
 suspicions." 
 
 " What do you mean ?" his daughter asked, quietly raising her 
 pretty eyes. 
 
 "He means what he says, this party does," returned the 
 ruffian. " He means this." 
 
 He drove one clenched fist against the open palm of his other 
 hand. It made a hard dull sound. Mrs. Armytage smiled 
 bitterly.
 
 236 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 "Tou are still a child, father," she said. " Have you worked 
 and studied so long that you do not know that fists, and knives, 
 and pistols are the weapons of fools ? You are a good actor 
 enough, and down-stairs you really look and act like a gentleman. 
 I wish you could divest yourself of your ruffianism when you 
 retire into private life." 
 
 " Don't call names, Flo," the Governor responded, with his 
 ugly grin, half-jokingly and half-angrily. " If Dick's a ruffian, my 
 fine ladyship is a ruffian's daughter. He doesn't like to be called 
 a ruffian, he doesn't. It riles him. Come and kiss me, Flo, or 
 by Jove I'll box your ears." 
 
 Mr. Hartley Livingstone — I suppress the many maledictions 
 that garnished his conversation — was a man of his word. His 
 hand was large and heavy, and Mrs. Armytage knew that the 
 threat he had just uttered was not by any means a vain one. So 
 she went up and kissed him, not reluctantly, and still not heartily, 
 but with that calm and equable philosophy which was apparent in 
 her private behaviour towards her papa. 
 
 " And now," the Governor resumed, a thorough reconciliation 
 having been effected, " to business. How stands the money 
 market, my duck of diamonds?" 
 
 "Eeady money, ready money, nothing but ready money," 
 answered Mrs. Armytage, in a vexed tone. " The business we 
 are carrying on is too large a one. We have too many irons in the 
 fire, father, and we shall be broken for the want of ready money." 
 
 " I don't see how that can be. "We've two capital strings to 
 our bow. There's Sir Jasper Goldthorpe as good as the dividends 
 on Plough Monday. If ever we want to kill the goose for its 
 golden eggs, you can drive down to Beryl Court, and give the old 
 gentleman a receipt in full for ten thousand down. Why, he's 
 got millions !" 
 
 "I don't know. I'm nervous; I'm anxious about Sir Jasper. 
 His life hangs on a thread, and were he to die, we could prove 
 nothing. Besides, when I saw him last, he seemed gene and 
 embarrassed, and spoke of the scarcity of money." 
 
 " Surely he can't be travelling to Queer Street. Where did 
 you see him last?" 
 
 " In Paris."
 
 EVE OF THE DELUGE. 237 
 
 " Has he come back to England yet ? " 
 
 " He returns to-day. He is to bring tliat Magdalen Hill up from 
 Swordsley, aud there are to be grand doings again in Onyx Square." 
 
 " And the young fellow ? " 
 
 "What young fellow?" and Florence Armytage first flushed 
 crimson, and then turned deadly pale. 
 
 "There, I don't want to interfere in your little love-affairs, my 
 dear. They're expensive ; but they give you pleasure, and they 
 don't concern me." 
 
 " They give me the pleasure of revenge," Mrs. Armytage said 
 slowly ; " of revenge the most signal, the most crushing, and yet 
 the most secret, over one that I love and one that I hate more 
 than ever man or woman was hated on this side the plains of 
 heaven or the sulphur of the bottomless pit." 
 
 " Ton are poetical, my child. Have your own way. It has 
 cost you a good many hundred pounds since last January twelve- 
 months ; but you know your own affairs best. The young fellow 
 I spoke of is the soldier-ofEcer — the dragoon Goldthorpe." 
 
 " Poor Willy ! " replied Mrs. Armytage, with a look of relief, 
 *' he is desperately dipped, I fear. His father is augry with him. 
 Even Sims won't lend him any more money." 
 
 " That's bad ; when that old rat deserts a ship, it must be 
 sinking indeed. Are there any manufactured articles, ho, ho ! of 
 ours, my dear, about with the Captain's signature to them ?" 
 
 "A few." 
 
 "Figure?" 
 
 " Three or four hundred pounds." 
 
 "Is he likely to pay?" 
 
 " There is a talk of his compounding with his creditors ; aud 
 Sims is to have the management of the affair." 
 
 " Then our little manufactured articles can be lumped in with 
 the rest, and Sims must go snacks. I dare say the Captain won't 
 holloa. He's been giving blank acceptances for the last two 
 years, and I dare say he doesn't know his own golden signature 
 from the manufactured article — from the SheflBeld plate, my dear. 
 Ho, ho!" 
 
 It had grown dark by this time, and Mr. Livingstone, having 
 carefully drawn the curtains, lighted a pair of wax-caudles.
 
 238 THE SEVEN SONS Of MAMIION. 
 
 '• I'm growing deuced weary of this confinement," lie said, 
 yawning and stretching his great arms. " For eleven months 
 I've never stirred out of this doghole of a house ; for eleveu 
 months I've been acting a part like Mr. Farren in the play ; for 
 eleven months I've borne all the extortions of that foul old hag 
 down-stairs. But your father's got patience, Florence, and he 
 knows that it'll all come right at last, and that he'll win the big 
 stake." 
 
 He began walking to and fro in the room, but cautiously used a 
 stick, and stumped it now and then on the carpet, lest those below 
 should wonder at so firm and ponderous a footstep. 
 
 "Irons in the fire!" he continued to himself. "Dick Living- 
 stone's got half a dozen, nearly red-hot by this time. There's the 
 gold, Florence, there's the gold ! " 
 
 "Do you still think the enterprise will succeed ? " 
 
 " Think ! I'm sure of it. Grindle, and Naylor, and Everest, 
 are all good men and true. They must get it ; and if between 
 this and next November we don't have twenty thousand pounds* 
 worth of bright red gold in dust, ingots, Mexican doubloons, and 
 Eussiau pauls, there isn't such a thing as the Great Eastern Eail- 
 way in England, and I'm a Dutchman." 
 
 " It's weary work." 
 
 " It's safer than your little game, my dear. Tour father helps 
 you in it, because he writes a neat hand, and you're fond of seeing 
 his little pothooks and hangers. Ho, ho ! And it certainly brings 
 in ready money ; but it's dangerous, Florence. What was it the 
 little boy confessed when his papa's house had been burnt down ? 
 ' Last night I played with Tommy lighting straws.' Wasn't that 
 it ? You're always playing with Tommy lighting straws, and if 
 you don't take care, the house will all be in a blaze some of these 
 fine days." 
 
 "I know it, I know it ;" Mrs. Armytage exclaimed ; " Sims has 
 told me so over and over again. I would give it up, but it brings 
 in the ready money of which we stand so much in need." 
 
 " Exactly so ; and so long as we are so very gay and so very 
 fashionable, and spend such quantities of money on our little fan- 
 cies, the ready money will be required." 
 
 " Tou can spend some yourself, father, if you please."
 
 EVE OF THE DELUGE. 239 
 
 " Tes, I can get rid of any amount, although I never stir be- 
 yond the walla of this house. Your papa's a scientific inventor, my 
 dear. Hasn't he laid out large sums in the perfection of a little 
 machine the results of which, some of these days, will rather 
 astonish the Governor and Company of the Bank of England? 
 Hasn't he his engravers and his paper-makers at work at half a 
 dozen places, and even beyond sea? Then there's the little letter- 
 of-credit concern. That costs money, my child ; but it will bring 
 in thousands before you are two years older. And, last of all, 
 isn't there this ? isn't there the laboratory ? Where's a greater 
 alchymist to be found than your fond father ? Ho, ho ! I want 
 to find more than the Philosopher's Stone, more than the Elixir 
 of Life. I want the Elixir of Death, my Florence." 
 
 The ruffian turned a key in a lock, and flung open the door of 
 what had originally been intended for a dressing-closet. He took 
 one of the candles from the table, and, holding it over his head, 
 looked exultingly into his laboratory. There were many shelves 
 within it laden with jars and phials, fuU of variously-coloured 
 liquids. There was a still. There was even a little furnace 
 with a flue that went up the chimney. There were glass rods 
 and steel pincers, many bunches of herbs and bundles of roots 
 hanging from nails on the walls, and a well-thumbed volume 
 or two. 
 
 " It's all here, it's all here," Hartley, alias Dick, Livingstone 
 repeated; "but it wants bringing out; it wants trying by the 
 level and the square." 
 
 He took a phial from the shelf, and held it to the light. 
 
 "There's death in this," he said, "sure enough; but it's the 
 death I don't want. Its death with agony, with convulsions, with 
 grinding, and foaming, and writhing, and stiffening into the shape 
 of a half moon. There's death in that blue bottle, in that red 
 one ; in this black stick of Cavendish, in that gray powder ; but 
 they're all no good to me. I don't want any colour in my elixir, I 
 don't want any smell, 1 don't want any taste, nor any nasty pre- 
 parations that make people pull ugly faces, and turn them livid 
 and swollen when the job is done. No, no. I want the real 
 elixir, the genuine article, the universal cure-all ; and I'll find it 
 out, if I blow the roof of this house off."
 
 240 THE SEVEN SONS OF MA.M3I0N. 
 
 " I wonder wliere it will all end?" Mrs. Army tage murmured 
 half to herself, and tapping one foot on the carpet. 
 
 "End!" echoed the ruffian, replacing the phial on its shelf, 
 and setting down the candle. " Where should it all end but in 
 success and in riches ? Tou little peddling rogue, you, with your 
 twopenny-halfpenny rascalities, I go in for thousands ! I want 
 men's lives to be of no more account to me than those of sheep 
 with the rot ! I'll rot 'em — I'll warm 'em!" 
 
 "Is it necessary ?" 
 
 " Ay ; it is. Tou'd like to kill somebody, wouldn't you. You'd 
 like me to cheat Magdalen Hill out of her fortune, and then have 
 her life, wouldn't you? All shall be done. All we want to do 
 shall be effected. Leave your father alone. He's going to make 
 your fortune. You shall marry a duke ; and, by jingo, the money 
 we'll make shall turn me into a Man again ; shall give me one 
 real name instead of half a dozen aliases ; shall sink and burn the 
 memory of the convict who ran into the bush from Hobart Town, 
 and who, ho, ho ! was supposed to have been murdered by the 
 natives. Many a time have I talked with Hugh Desborough about 
 it. He was my mate in the chain-gang, Flo. I wonder what's 
 become of him ? I wonder whether your friend Mr. Sims knows 
 anything about him ? By your account he seems to know every- 
 thinf^. I should like to have a word with that Mr. Sims. We 
 might work together." 
 
 " I think you are better apart," his daughter observed. " You 
 are too desperate in your speculations for him, father. Sims is 
 always' on the safe side. Heigho ! " she added, " I wish I were ; 
 but I'm in the labyrinth, and must grope my way about as best I 
 
 can." 
 
 She rose to go, and held up her face to the ruffian to be kissed 
 
 agam. 
 
 " Can I do anything more for you, my darling ?" he asked. 
 
 " Stay!" she exclaimed hastily, "you can. I had forgotten. 
 Here are half a dozen signatures to be written. I must have the 
 money by Tuesday nest. It is the eve of the Derby Day." 
 
 "What! have you made a book ?" asked Livingstone, as he 
 received an oblong packet of papers from her, and began to look 
 over them.
 
 EVE OF THE DELUGE. 241 
 
 "Nevermind, I must have the money, that's enough. I have 
 only given you signatures that are beyond my powers. Tibby 
 and Chatwynd I could never mannge. Lord Fortyscore's original 
 you have. I will come for them in the course of to-morrow. 
 Good-night, father." 
 
 " Good-night, my chickabiddy," the urbane Governor replied, 
 once more kissing his daughter. " Good-night, and God bless 
 you." Yes, he bade God bless her, he did — this ruffian. 
 
 Mrs. Armytage took a cab to her grand furnished apartments at 
 Albert Gate. As she alighted from the vehicle and stood on 
 the doorstep, some large drops of rain began to patter on tlie 
 pavement. 
 
 " It will rain in torrents before morning," she thought. " I've 
 often wished that a Deluge might come to drown all us wicked 
 people in a heap. It would be better, perhaps." 
 
 Perhaps. The rain did fall in torrents within an hour's time. 
 "Was there indeed a Deluge coming, in which all the wicked people 
 were to be submerged, and only the Just saved? 
 
 There are those who will read these sheets, and who, wading 
 through the Slough of villanous Despond whicli the chronicler has 
 mapped out, may cry "absurd !" " improbable!" "preposterous !" 
 and "impossible!" when they take note of the characters and 
 weigh the incidents in this story. The cry would be, at best, but 
 a parrot one, which I have heard five hundred times. "When we 
 have not seen, and when we do not know, things, there is nothing 
 easier than to doubt their probability, or even to deny their 
 existence. Not later than yesterday I heard an ass question 
 whether Eichard Burton ever went to Mecca or to the Mormon 
 country ; and another, more malevolent, ascribe to M. du Chailki 
 the exuberant imaginativeness of Baron Munchausen. I dare say 
 that few persons find anything astonishing in the wealth of my 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, in the good-humour and vulgarity of hia 
 wife, in the self-possessed reticence of Miss Magdalen Hill, in the 
 politeness of Dr. Sardonix, or in the easy profligacy of the Captain 
 of Dragoons. There are things which we see every day, and with 
 which we are all familiar. To be told what we know flatters our 
 sense of self-esteem, and makes us think what clever fellows we 
 are : it is when we are told that of which we had previously no
 
 243 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 knowledge that we begin to sneer our " ob, indeeds !" and resent, 
 as an impertinence, information wbich, from want of evidence, we 
 reject at once as untrustworthy. There is my Miss Salusbury, for 
 instance. The majority of my female friends are enraged at the 
 portraiture given of that young lady. They declare that a noble- 
 man's daughter who swears, who bets, who reads BelVs Life, and 
 who talks slang, is a monstrous impossibility. I can only shrug my 
 shoulders, and say that I have known the Honourable Letitia 
 Salusbury in the flesh. So with Mrs. Armytage. I grant that 
 she is an uncommon specimen of wickedness; but only last Sunday 
 I dined with a friend who knew her, her face, her ringlets, her 
 wiles, her thefts, and her forgeries by heart ; only, you see, her 
 name was not Armytage, but something else. Are you to stigma- 
 tise Mr. Sims, again, as an overdrawn character, because you never 
 met him ? For the reason that you never boarded at Mrs. Ceesar 
 Donkin's, are you to deny the verisemblance of the witch of 
 Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace? Finally, because you were never 
 cheated or poisoned by a returned convict disguised as an invalid 
 dotard, are you, with impunity, to asseverate that the picture of 
 Mr. Hartley Livingstone is grossly overcharged ? Bah ! I tell 
 you that I have known these people, and they must play their 
 several parts round the shrine of Mammon until that Deluge 
 which threatens them all arrives.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 DOWN AMONG THE BAD MEN 
 
 " Only to die ! It is not, after all, so diificult ? Only to die 
 Have I not heard, over and over again, the man in Samlet slowly 
 mouthing out the poet's magnificent reflections on the easiness of 
 death ? Tes ; who would bear all this wretchedness and misery 
 when the quietus oflers itself at once in the shape of a bare bodkin? 
 The Eomans used to throw themselves on their swords. Could I 
 throw myself on this half-blunted vilely-forged cutlass ? Psha! I 
 might as well attempt to cut my throat with a pedlar's razor. It is 
 bad enough to have one's neck lialf sawn through with a leathern 
 stock, without hacking and hewing at it with this rusty plough- 
 share. Ah ! if I had but one of my Sowars' swords far away — the 
 keen glittering blade in its wooden scabbard, the sword that, like 
 Saladin's, would divide a veil cast upon it, or cleave a down-cushion 
 in twain. How many years is it since I read the Talisman ? I re- 
 member: it was at school. Lowman, the usher, lent it me. I think 
 I lent the poor fellow five shillings in return, for he was desperately 
 poor, and we were always laughing at liis torn elbows and great 
 ragged collars. ' Cocky Lowman ' we called him, from his one 
 «ye that used to look round the corner. I wonder where he 
 is by this time. Happier than I am. Heaven help me ! Dead 
 perhaps. Only to die ! Number one hundred and three went off 
 last night, quietly and calmly as a lamb, and gently murmuring 
 about his mother in Heaven. It was consumption. La poitrine, 
 as the Chirurgeon-Major called it. His mother, ay, his mother ! 
 We foimd her portrait in a locket hung round his neck, when the 
 infirmier came to put the linceul on him. I am forgetting my own 
 language. And yet the young ruffian was here but last night, and 
 had committed, the commissary said, two murders. His mother: 
 — and mine ?
 
 244 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 " I am hale and strong, and absolutely relish the abominable 
 victuals they give us, just as I used to do in our old bivouac days. 
 Wretched and forlorn as I am, I find myself counting the minutes 
 to dinner, and then again to my pipe, and the cabaret, and the 
 dominoes. Will it end, I wonder, in my becoming a callous 
 ruffian like that villanous old Le Camus ? Perhaps. I might 
 cease then to Think. 
 
 " But only to die ! If I could only die ! How does a man set 
 about blowing his brains out ? There are pistols enough to be 
 had. But could I kill the Secret as well as myself? Ah, 
 Florence Armytage, Florence Armytage! if I had you here, I 
 would show you that the companionship of these wretches has 
 made me as desperate as they, and either you or I should perish^ 
 but there should be an end now and for ever to our infernal 
 compact. 
 
 " The woman says she loves me. ' Love me in return,' she 
 never ceases to write; 'give me but one little word of love, and 
 riches, freedom, happiness shall be yours.' Yes, freedom, and 
 riches, and happiness, and a fiend for a helpmate. I cannot 
 even bring myself to lie to her. I detest, I abhor her too much. 
 
 " I am hidden from the world, and have no country and no 
 name. Dominique Cosson, Frere la'ique of the Marist Fathers of 
 Good Works at Hoogeudracht, or Fran9ois Vireloque, of the 
 Hulks, Belleriport, it is all one. To-morrow it may please her to 
 give me a new alias, and to conceal me under some fresh disguise. 
 What if I broke the oath she extorted from me ? What if I 
 defied her to do her worst ? Ah ! that worst. Father, mother, 
 brethren, honour, position, and fame, would be all sunk in one 
 great gulf of ruin and dishonour. Can my father have been as 
 insane, as guilty, as would appear from those fatal papers ? How 
 did she become possessed of them ? Would their production 
 have the blasting result she predicted ? I dare not hope other- 
 wise. It must be so. The lighted match is in my hand, and one 
 spark would set our house in a blaze. 
 
 " For how many years has that woman been the curse of my 
 life? If, when I came home first I had gone straight to England, 
 I might have avoided falling into her toils. But Fate ruled that 
 I was to tarry in Paris, to know her, and become her slave. Am
 
 DOWN AMONG THE BAD MEN. 2-45 
 
 I wholly guiltless either? Did I never fan tlie flame of her 
 wretched love ? Have I ever been false, even for a moment, even 
 in thought, to the woman who gave me her heart, and who should 
 now be my bride? AVhat is she doing now? Where is she? 
 To her I am dead — dead and buried. Has she forgotten me? 
 Has she ever felt grief at my loss ? Is it assuaged now, and is 
 ehe intent on becoming another man's wife ? A strange girl ! I 
 dare not doubt the love she professed for me. I admire, I esteem, 
 I revere her; but do I love her as I should? "Was there not 
 always something austere and frigid about her that repelled me 
 when I would have grown fond ? Her letters were as haughty as 
 she herself was. Lovers talk nonsense. She never did. She 
 never responded to one word of endearment ; and when she sub- 
 scribed herself as ' with sincere aftection,' it was as though she 
 had stated herself to be my ' obedient servant.' 
 
 " Is this to be the end of my miserable life ? Are there any 
 more scenes wanting to complete the drama of sorrow? AVill 
 despair pass from suUeuness to desperation ? and shall I have at 
 last the despicable courage to kill myself? I should not be the 
 first guardian of this pest-house who had made an end of his 
 intolerable captivity. Did not Le Camus tell me about Briffard, 
 my predecessor, who, montlis ago, hanged himself in a saw pit ? 
 He had been a garde-chasse, — a gamekeeper, — and had shot a 
 poacher dead. Even the sulky and morose comrades he had here, 
 avoided and mistrusted the man upon whose hands there was 
 blood. He had never been punished for his crime, nay, had 
 received reward — such as it was — for an act of 'courageous 
 devotion,' as the Procureur Imperial called it ; but he was none 
 the less a pariah and an outcast. The poacher whom he had 
 elain left a wife and children. The woman his widow used to 
 make a journey to Belleriport every Easter and every New Tear, 
 — she had to come over a hundred miles on foot, poor woman, — 
 and wait for Briffard at the dockyard-gates, and show him her 
 dead husband's shirt, with the bloody rent in the breast where 
 his slugs had entered, and solemnly curse him. Easter and New 
 Year, New Tear and Easter, she never missed. The convicts used 
 to call the doomed man Cain. Like Cain, his punishment was 
 greater than he could bear, and one day he hanged himself. The
 
 246 THE SEVEN SONS OF MA^BION. 
 
 shop "where he bought the rope is close to the cabaret. I pass it 
 every day. He wanted the halter, he said, for a dog. It was for 
 himself. The commissary never liked Briffard. He told him one 
 day that it was only through a lucky accident that he did not 
 wear a brand on his shoulder and irons on his ankles. The 
 manner of his death was an excuse for denying military honours 
 to his funeral. ' Military honours ? ' Tes ; they go through that 
 mockery even with a dead garde-chiourme. We are supposed to 
 form part of the armed force, and to be under les drapeaux de Vetat 
 — the banners of the State ; its upas-tree, rather. 
 
 " I have not killed a man as Briffard did ; yet he could not have 
 been wretcheder than I am. A phantom continually haunted 
 him, it was said — the ghost of the poacher he had shot. I too am 
 haunted, by the phantom of Myself. My own phantom ! A 
 strange one to be pursued by. I see myself rich and prosperous, 
 and caressed. Coming home to a feast of love and happiness. 
 Poor men were envious of me even while they flattered. Mothers 
 intrigued and fawned, and strove to palm off their daughters upon 
 one who was heir to so many thousands a year ! Thousands a 
 year ! How long is it since I had any money ? How I hunger for 
 the paltry copper dole a day which is allotted to me for my hang- 
 man's ofiBce ! Thousands a year ! I have not five francs in the 
 world. I used to buy watches and jewellery, horses, fine clothes, 
 every imaginable luxury. I betted, I played at cards. I have 
 scattered handfuls of rupees. Now I am glad enough to have 
 sufficient pelf to buy an extra half-ounce of tobacco, a dram of 
 absinthe, or two sous-worth of fried potatoes. 
 
 " I should be better off as a convict. The degraded brutes who 
 shared my punishment might sympathise with, or perhaps admire 
 me, were my crime great enough. The active principle would be 
 at work. I should have work to do, punishment to elude by craft ; 
 an escape perhaps to plan, a terra to my torture to anticipate. I 
 have known even those condemned for life indulge in hopes of 
 some fortuitous deliverance, through the accession of a king, 
 through a ffre, a pestilence, a revolution, a hundred other acci- 
 dents. For me there is no hope. A garde-chiourme has no 
 friends. "We are always grumbling and disputing among our- 
 selves, and seeking to curry favour with the commissary by
 
 DOVm AMO-NG THE BAD MEN. 247 
 
 denouncing one another for neglect of duty. The townspeople 
 avoid and abhor us ; not the pettiest tradesman or tavern-keeper 
 will trust a garde-cliiourme. The soldiers are chary of drinking or 
 smoking with us ; and the sailors of the men-of-war in port make 
 no secret of their contempt and dislike for men whose duty it is 
 to keep guard over galley-slaves ; and every garde-cliiourme knows 
 that he is surrounded by hundreds of bitter foes, all chained as 
 they are, who hate him, who curse him in their hearts, and would 
 take his life, if they could, as though it were a dog's. 
 
 " There, I will think no more or I shall go mad. Mad ! it 
 would be a luxury, a relief, for one's wits to turn : I should not 
 dwell upon the past then ; I should have a new world — all wild 
 and unreal as it may be — to dwell in. But my mind seems as 
 unclouded as my body is strong. I am not to go mad, nor to die 
 yet awhile. But how long is this horrible AVhile to last ? " 
 
 Now these words were neither spoken nor written, nor, all 
 loose and fragmentary as they may seem, were they uttered even 
 with the coherence that I have given them. They came and went 
 and crossed each other's path in straggling and capricious order. 
 They rose up unbidden, and departed unawares. They were the 
 inner speech — the thoughts that coursed through the brain of the 
 man known as rEAK90is Vieeloque, as, in coarse and clumsy 
 garb and awkward forage cap, he slouched to and fro on his beat 
 in the dockyard of Belleriport. 
 
 It was a glorious summer noon, and the sky one blaze of sun- 
 shine. Not till you had blinked and winked and rid yourself of 
 your first bedazzlement, and shaded your eyes with your hand, 
 could you discover that the heavens were not all Sun, but that 
 away from the great orb there stretched a boundless arch of deep 
 azure. There were no clouds, no mists, no fogs, nor smoke below, 
 either of marsh or of man's making : nothing but God's sky, and 
 in the midst of it God's Eye looking down upon the folly and 
 wickedness and cruelty of His children. "What millions, billions, 
 trillions of francs and centimes had there not been spent here 
 within two centuries ! what giant buildings erected, what cunning 
 schemes of man's ingenuity perfected, what triumphant monu- 
 ments of his industry achieved ! and all for what ? One half the
 
 246 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 great work done had been for the carrj'ing out the great trade of 
 ]Murder. Saw-pits and rope-walks, forges and block -cutting 
 machines, powder magazines and provision stores, great piles of 
 seasoned timber, great pyramids now of cannon-balls, now of tar- 
 barrels, armories and warehouses full of clothes and munitions, — 
 what were they all for ? Not for the comfort or improvement of 
 mankind, but for the equipment of huge war-ships, that were to 
 deal forth fire and destruction into other war-ships, merely because 
 they carried flags of other colours, and were manned by creatures 
 of another race. These scores of great guns so admirably adjusted, 
 so exquisitely mounted, which the foundries and wheelwright's 
 shop turned out with ceaseless activity, what were they for but to 
 make murder swifter and easier? Those stalwart men-o'-war's 
 men who rowed ashore, with spruce captains and lieutenants, all 
 cocked-hats and gold-lace, sitting in the stern sheets, were taught 
 to call their profession a glorious one. What was its end ? 
 Slaughter. Those trim surgeons, with their long surtouts and 
 instrument cases covered with shagreen, trotting to and fro 
 between ships and hospitals, had only learnt the merciful art of 
 healing to cure the hideous gashes and maimings inflicted by 
 those with whom they dined at mess and smoked cigars day after 
 day. It was handy-dandy, give and take, the Doctrine of Com- 
 pensation, forsooth. The State paid one set of men to smash 
 their fellow creatures' legs and arms, and then paid another set of 
 men to mind them, and pays them still, elsewhere than at Belle- 
 riport. It is all right and proper, no doubt ; and to call war 
 murder, and to maintain that the massacre of human beings by 
 broadsides or by bayonet cliarges, whole crews and whole batta- 
 lions at a time, is a hideous and enormous sin, and one that in the 
 end Heaven will judge and Heaven will punish, is to be sneered 
 at as a sentimentalist, or scouted as a visionary. There were no 
 iron-cased frigates, no Armstrong or Dahlgren guns ten years ago, 
 but there were plenty of ships with plenty of guns that would kill 
 well enough when fired oft'. The rudest and most uncivilised 
 nations have from the earliest times found little difiiculty in 
 hacking and hewing their enemies. It is all right and proper, I 
 suppose and repeat, and glory is to be glory to the end of the 
 chapter. If I hide behind a hedge waiting for my foe, and,
 
 DOWN AMONG THE BAD MEX. 249 
 
 catching liim in the nick of time, send a bullet through liis bead ; 
 if I beat out his brains with a liammer, or drug his posset with 
 strychnine, — it is murder before tlie law. The jury put their heads 
 together; the judge shakes his, and writes sus. per coll. against 
 my name in his calendar ; and I belong thenceforth to the ordi- 
 nary, and the sheriff, and the hangman, who, after I have been 
 exemplarily strangled, sells my clothes to Madame Tussaud. 
 Miscreant tliat I am ! hasten to get me a niche in the Chamber 
 of Horrors between Hocker and Mrs. Manning. But if I hide 
 behind a hedge, and am dressed in a smart tunic and shako ; if I 
 pick off not oue but twenty enemies, against whom I have no 
 grudge, and never saw them probably in my life before ; if I march 
 across the open, and with drums beating and colours flying allow 
 other people, equally strangers to me, to have a chance of blowing 
 my brains out ; if I point a cannon towards a town, and load and 
 fire it, and send so much lead, or so many jagged pieces of iron so 
 many thousand paces to kill, for aught I know, besides my so- 
 called " enemies " (whom I don't know from Adam), the patriarch 
 of eighty, the new-made bride, nay, perhaps the babe that is 
 unborn ; if I dash into a river on horseback, and meeting another 
 mounted man cleave him to the chine with a sword, or batter in 
 his skull with the butt-end of a carbine, and having taken from 
 him a silk rag tied to a pole, ride away rejoicing, — all this is not 
 Murder : it is Courage, heroism, chivalry, glory ; I am rewarded 
 with titles, stars, crosses, freedoms of the City in golden boxes, 
 diamond-hilted swords, and so much money for each limb I lose. 
 They may liang up my portrait as a tavern-sign, and name a street, 
 a bridge, or a boot, after me ; my ultimate bourne on earth — for 
 all that I may be laid in St. Paul's and AYestminster Abbey — will 
 still be Madame Tussaud's, where, however, no extra sixpence will 
 be paid to view my elEgy. I shall herd among the heroes, and be 
 admired with Napoleon the Great and the Emperor Alexander's 
 gigantic drummer. Again, and for the last time, I say that all 
 this is perfectly right and proper, that war is no doubt a necessary 
 evil, and that it is mere mawkisli puling sentimentalism to decry 
 glory and stigmatise as murderous the heroic achievements of the 
 battle-field. Of course ; but for my part, I must express the 
 opinion that society has been rather hard in modern times upon
 
 250 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMOX. 
 
 Cannibals. Why should we so loathe a poor Tiji-Islander or New 
 Zealander for making a meal of a fallen foe ? If it be justifiable 
 to slash and maim and carve and gird and thrust and burn and 
 stab and wrench and grind and tear the life out of a man whom 
 we never saw before, and who has never done us any manner of 
 harm, why should it not be equally justifiable to cook and eat 
 our enemy after we have killed him ? 
 
 Meanwhile the sun shone upon the ships of the war of the 
 French Eepublic, — upon stately three-deckers, upon frigates 
 armed en flute, and slim corvettes, and stealthy sable war-steam- 
 ers sliding in and out of port vdth an adder's swiftness and 
 subtlety. The sun shone upon the tall three-deckers laid up in 
 ordinary, with their sides painted dockyard drab, and their decks 
 protected by awnings of blinding white ; upon the boats cleaving 
 the water to and fro ; — some barges or lighters lading or unlading 
 powder and provisions ; — some wherries, manned by the red- 
 nightcapped convicts, a seafaring garde-cMourme steering ; some 
 the smart gigs and launches of the war-ships, with crews strong and 
 well-clad enough, but on whom an English jack-tar at Portsmouth 
 or Plymouth could not have helped looking with a kind of amused 
 astonishment. A Prench man-o'-war's man is in outward appear- 
 ance a compound between Mr. T. P. Cooke in Black-eyed Susan, 
 and the rider of a " trick act " in a circus. He is a brave fellow 
 without doubt, and can handle his cutlass and boarding-pike in 
 the most approved manner: but still he gives the spectator 
 the impression of being far more accustomed to eaii sucre'e than 
 salt water. He is stich a dandy ; he is so theatrical. His whis- 
 kers have such a boulevard cut ; his shirt and jacket and straw 
 hat such a hal-masque fashion. He is the descendant of the old 
 Prench Sea-kings, — of the Jean Parts and Duguay Trouins, — 
 who shall gainsay it ? He would have cheered lustily when the 
 Vengeur didn't go down with the tricolour of the Republic one 
 and indivisible flaunting at the main ; but what are we to say to a 
 man-o'-war's man who wears a red stripe down each leg of his 
 trousers ? 
 
 As the sun shone upon Belleriport, — upon its forts and ships 
 and soldiers and sailors and convicts, — so had it shone long before 
 Eepublic and Empire, and far into the days of the Bourbon
 
 DOWN AMONG THE BAD MEN. 251 
 
 monarchy. Up yonder creek rotted one of the ancient galleys of 
 Louis the Tourteenth's time — galleys which made their last 
 appearance in warlike life at the battle of La Hogue — galleys 
 which, when felons were scarce, had seen chained to their oars 
 Turks and Arabs taken from the piratical cruisers of Tunis and 
 Sallee, and forced into slavery, as a retaliation for the captivity of 
 Christians among the fierce powers of Barbary. High and dry 
 in the mud was the dismantled hull of a hundred-and-twenty gun- 
 ship, which, completely armed and equipped, the town of Belleri- 
 port had ofiered to Louis the Sixteenth on his wedding-day ; 
 while by her side, and sinking daily deeper into the ooze, were 
 the crazy timbers of a little schooner that had done good service 
 in the times of the American War ; for she had taken— so old 
 men said — Eochambeau and Lafayette across the Atlantic, and 
 brought the printer philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, back as 
 ambassador to the court of the most Christian king. More than 
 this, she had once borne the flag of a famous filibuster, and every 
 old sailor in Belleriport boasted of the days when the Bonlio^nme 
 Bichard went up the Frith of Forth with Paul Jones. 
 
 Forts ! there were forts everywhere. Not a cask of pitch, not 
 a coil of rope, not a heap of rusty anchors, not a crane or pair of 
 towering sheers for lifting ships' masts, but seemed protected by 
 a shining granite wall bristling with cannon. Not to speak of the 
 great fortresses looming far out to sea, cutting the blue waters at 
 all kinds of eccentric angles, and surmounted every one of them 
 by the tricolour lazily flapping in the hot air. Not to speak of 
 the huge outer fortifications surrounding dockyard and convict 
 prison, with a preposterous vandyked collar of moats and earth" 
 works. Not to speak of the hoary old chateau, built by Francis 
 the First, which defended the entrance to the mercantile port, — 
 a tower, venerable and picturesque, which stranger artists often 
 came to sketch, and were as often warned off, or threatened 
 with the terrors of the Maritime Prefect by stolid sentinels, who 
 knew nothing of the fine arts, but whose rigorous consigne it was 
 to prevent any one making plans of the fortifications of Bel- 
 leriport. 
 
 The town, its port, and warehouses, for it still possessed con- 
 siderable commercial importance, lay to the left of the garde-
 
 252 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 eMourme as he slouched on his beat. He could look dowu on 
 the narrow streets, the tall white houses and green blinds, the 
 littered quays that were odorous with tobacco and coffee, and 
 seemed sticky with sugar. Far away in the remote distance were 
 more white houses and green blinds, standing in the midst of 
 orange and fig groves. But no mountain range closed up the 
 distance. For scores of miles on every side behind Belleriport 
 stretched the red, arid, burnt-up coiintry of the South, treeless, 
 houseless, and hedgeless, only relieved here and there by dusky 
 patches of some vegetation, so dry and stunted-looking that tra- 
 vellers stared with amazement when they were told that these 
 patches teemed with olives and with grapes. 
 
 Still sweltered Fran9oi3 Yireloque, the garde-cliiourme, in his 
 uniform suit of coarse woollen, and thoughts came over him of the 
 cool linen garb and shady pith-hat he used to wear in the scarcely 
 hotter East far away ; of his day-dawn rides, when the breeze came 
 refreshingly when the sun was up ; of tiffin and iced drinks and 
 bottled beer, and Manilla cheroots ; and then his thoughts went 
 back, and reverted to English summer evenings, and deep pools 
 among the alders, whither he and his school-mates came to bathe. 
 What was that boy's name who came to such grief because he 
 could not swim ? What an awful moment was that when he was 
 seized with the agonies of cramp, and was only saved from sinking 
 by his foot clutching with convulsive energy at some tall weeds ! 
 What a lucky escape it was! He remembered the pool, the 
 alders, the pollards, the legend of the old water-rat that was said 
 to dwell there, that had fangs long and yellow and hooked, that 
 darted out of his hole sometimes as the boys were undressing and 
 made them shudder, and was said to have such a horrible appetite 
 for the legs of children of tender years. It was a perilous pool 
 indeed ; for it was on the ground of a farmer who continually 
 muttered dire threats concerning trespassing, and pursued timid 
 boys with a stock-whip until he had hunted them down, and 
 forced them, trembling, to give their names that he might report 
 them to the Doctor. But he never did so report them, and con- 
 tented himself with " danging " them ; and they bathed in his 
 pool and ate his apples, but gave a wide berth to his great bull 
 that guarded the orchard from the adjoining meadow, as the
 
 DOWN AilOXG THE BAD MEN. 253 
 
 dragon guarded the Hesperides, and by a sudden rush and feint 
 — but was it a feint ? — of butting would often force the biggest 
 and bravest boy to drop a whole capful of ruddy-cheeked pippins. 
 Dried up for ever, garde-cldourme ! is that pool. The hole of 
 the water-rat, the long-toothed vermin itself, would be welcome 
 here, where every outlet is guarded, where every chink and 
 cranny is stopped. That gray old rascal with his cunning eye ? 
 See ! there are seven hundred rascals, old and young, and clothed 
 in gray, toiling on the great digue, — the breakwater — which lies, 
 a giant bar of granite, glistening diamond-like, across the harbour 
 that mocks nature and makes a false horizon. 
 
 The orange and the myrtle groves have sweet odours, they say. 
 They were plentiful outside this Tartarus, but their scent never 
 passed beyond the high stone walls. In their lieu came the 
 sickening: smell from the basin in the town where the merchant- 
 ships lay moored ; a smell that was overpowering, and almost dense 
 enough to be felt and cut asunder. 
 
 It was noon, and a clock struck, the great clock of the yard 
 followed by a score of ill-conditioned horologes, from the churches 
 and public buildings in the town, and that seemed to whine and 
 grumble while they proclaimed the hour. And then the great bell 
 of the hagiie began to toll. It was for no man's death. It was 
 only for dinner. 
 
 Such a dinner ! The felons came trooping from their labours^ 
 scrambling over piles of wood, clumsily clambering from boats 
 clanking along in their chain-gangs. The guards followed them 
 up closely, making their canes felt if the wretches straggled or 
 exchanged any conversation. It was rran9ois Vireloque's duty to 
 be last ; and last he slouched into the inner yard of the lagne, — 
 they had to pass through half a dozen ere they reached their 
 refectory, — and saw each heavy gate locked by the porte-clefs 
 after him. 
 
 Such a dinner, and such a dining-room ! It must be granted 
 that the repast was an al fresco one ; for between the four white 
 walls of the prison-yard the fierce sun poured down its wrath on 
 the creatures condemned to dine without shade. The sun made 
 so many blazing lakes of a series of huge tubs filled with Heaven 
 knows what sickening hell-broth of herbs and hot water ; only I
 
 254- THE SEVKN SONS Of MAMMON. 
 
 know that large marigolds floated on the surface, and that here 
 and there a bone with a scrap of gristle attached to it bobbed up 
 and down, and that the whole distilled a rank and acrid perfume. 
 Each convict as he entered the yard took a tin pannikin from a 
 rack, and a lump of black bread from a basket, over which a garde- 
 chiourme kept guard. Then if he belonged to mess number one, 
 he went to tub number one, and if .to mess number two, to the 
 corresponding tub, and there fell to like a wild beast, I say like 
 a wild beast — or rather like some caged hyaena that yells and 
 crunches over his shin-bone of horse-flesh. The creatures crowded 
 round the tubs and fought and cursed for places. The weakest 
 went to the wall; the timid criminal had his lump of bread 
 wrenched from him by the stronger hands of the athletic scoun- 
 drel. Some positively bit at one another, or shufiled their 
 chained legs against them to gall their sides. They baled canfuls 
 of abomination from the seething slough that was called soup ; 
 they splashed and scalded one another, now in horse-play, now in 
 spite ; they screamed over a chance piece of flesh, and battled for 
 it till their callous hands were slippery ; they licked the precious 
 drops of grease that had fallen ou their sleeves ; and when from 
 time to time some fiercer contest than ordinary over a meaty bone 
 converted the scramble into a fray, the guards swooped down upon 
 them, and beat them ofi" with their hadines. 
 
 " Pretty animals, u'est-ce pas, mon gars ? " was the observation 
 of le Sieur le Camus to his comrade Vireloque. " Tou would not 
 see a more charming sight in the Jardin des Plantes at feeding 
 time." 
 
 " They are not like human beings," his companion said. 
 " Ma foi ! they are like just what they are, A format is Skforgat. 
 In this place, my friend, one grows only to care for the stride 
 necessaire, and their soup and bread is all in all to them. After 
 all, shall we not relish our ga?)ieUe of harricoes when ces messieurs 
 have dined ? My stomach says yes unmistakeably. See, the 
 repast is at an end. The lambs are going to drink." 
 
 About eight minutes had been allowed for this tub-diet, 
 and every one of them was by this time empty. The convicts 
 were called off by the tap of a drum, and came crowding, with 
 the same pannikins from which they had swallowed their
 
 DOWN AMONG THE BAD MEN. 255 
 
 soup, to a species of stone bar, between whicli and some ujjriglit 
 casks stood several gardes chiourme, who had donned blue aprons 
 over their uniforms. Here wine was served out to each felon 
 —wine mingled with thrice its body of water, wane thick and 
 muddy, of a vile livid colour, a viler smell, and vilest, most loath- 
 some, most abhorrent taste of all, but still the residue, in some 
 form or another, of some monstrous degeneration and perversion 
 of the fermented juice of the grape. The wretches drank this 
 hideous mixture as greedily as they bad gnawed their bread and 
 gulped their soup ; then they were marched out again, clattering 
 and clanking from yard to yard, into the open. About twenty 
 minutes were allowed them — for "recreation " — that is, they were 
 permitted to stand still, without working, in the sun, or find what 
 sheltering shade they could from pent-house roofs or behind logs 
 of timber. And then they were driven to their toil again. A 
 detachment was left behind in the prison, not to sweep up the 
 fragments, — for not a scrap remained of the wolfish feed, — but to 
 scrub the pannikins, and sluice out the tubs with water. At six 
 o'clock they would have their evening meal ; no more soup, but 
 another lump of bread, and another ration of the mixture of ink 
 and cask-lees which was dignified with the name of wine. 
 
 " And now," said Le Camus, " it is time, I think, brother of 
 mine, that we went to our own little ordinaire. I smeU the 
 haricoes at a distance. The fare of those brutes is coarse enough; 
 and yet putting on one side a morsel of beef, we dine scarcely 
 better than they do. Better, we often dine worse ; for a poor 
 fellow of a garde-chiourme has often nothing but his pay to depend 
 upon, and that will only get him his pipe and his goutte. beyond 
 his rations, whereas those among ces onessieurs who have money 
 may feed as sumptuously as though they were at the Trois Freres 
 Proven^aux, instead of here en Provence.^' 
 
 " Feed sumptuously ! " repeated Fran9ois Vireloque. " Of 
 what use can money be to them, strictly guarded and narrowly 
 watched as they are ! " 
 
 " scarcely fledged and thoroughly unsophisticated garde- 
 chiourme ! " Le Camus said with a sneer, '• were you born yes- 
 terday, that you do not know that money is of use everywhere ? 
 Shut me up in a rock, and keep me there for three centuries, like
 
 256 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 a toad, but put a lillet de hanque beside me ; lay me iu my grave, 
 but put a sackful of five-franc pieces beside me, — and I will find 
 out a way to turn them to good account," 
 
 " But what is the use of money to a convict chained to another, 
 who at any moment may betray him ? " 
 
 " The rich are not betrayed ; it is only when one grows poor 
 that treachery steps in to sup us up. Did you observe, among 
 those brawling gangs howling and squabbling over the buckets, 
 certain groups that kept close together, that were very still and 
 quiet, and that seemed by no means anxious to dip their pannikins 
 into the soup ? " 
 
 " I did. AVhat then ? " 
 
 "Well, to every one of those groups were scouts and outlying 
 pickets, who were fed by lumps of bread, pinches of tobacco, or a 
 gros sous or two to give warning of the coming of some sharp-eyed 
 garde-chiourme among us. In every one of those groups there was 
 feasting going on. I tell you we have those among our convicts 
 who dine every day on white bread, on cold roast fowl, and Lyons 
 sausage ; who have ripe figs and peaches, and rich, fromage de Brie, 
 the rascals ; and wash all down with choice burgundy or genial 
 cognac." 
 
 " Whence do they procure these luxuries ? " 
 
 *' How should I know ? " the elder gaoler answered, shrugging 
 his shoulders. " They have money, that is enough. Perhaps the 
 sailors from the ships, perhaps the free shipwrights or labourers 
 in the dockyard, bring them these little delicacies. We gardes- 
 cMourme are too closely watched to carry provisions for them, or 
 to take bribes. Is it not so ? The sergeant has his eye on us, 
 the commissary has his eye on us ; and then not one of us can 
 make sure but that his comrade may be a spy. All I know is, 
 that not a day passes but some convict is placed mt cachot for 
 being in possession of tobacco ; that scarcely a week elapses 
 without another getting the bastinado for being drunk. When 
 we discover them they are punished of course; when they are 
 not discovered, they eat and smoke and drink and enjoy them- 
 selves much more than we do. But they must have the five-franc 
 pieces, my brother. Woe be to the convict who has no money." 
 " Will money help them to escape ? "
 
 DOWN AMONG THE BAD MEN. 257 
 
 "Chut! you are venturing upon forbidden ground. On ne parle 
 pas cVevasio)i du larjne de Belleriport. Your English friend tried 
 to escape only last week, you remember, and was retaken in scaling 
 the very last of the walls. A nice dose of the corde goudronnee 
 lie would have had, but that an imbecile of a sentinel shot him 
 through the back, and sent him to the hospital. I don't think 
 he will ever come out of it," 
 
 " Is he worse ? " 
 
 " Much worse this morning ; but bah ! Why waste words upon 
 cette canaille. Hark ! there is our bell. It is time for us to go 
 and eat our haricoes."
 
 CHAPTEK XX. 
 
 SISTER MAEIE DES DOULEURS. 
 
 The sun was tired out with excess of wrath, and in a red rage 
 had set, and gone to sleep. The slavish toil of the lagne was over, 
 and the convicts lay by hundreds, in their dormitories, on the bare 
 boards of shelving barrack-pallets. They were still chained. A 
 slight uprising of the boards made their pillow ; there was a 
 scanty coverlet for each four men, and that was all. So they lay 
 until one side was sore and bruised, and then turned over, until 
 the other was as bruised and sore. Mattresses could not be had 
 even for money at Belleriport, though cushions and soft pads had 
 been detected in being smuggled in sometimes for villains of 
 wealth. At either end of these vast dormitories, ventilated by 
 iron louvre casements, like those in the cooling-room of a brew- 
 house, burnt Avith dim light a lamp of oil. Up and down the 
 long lane between the rows of barrack-beds walked all night, but 
 relieved at intervals, with drawn cutlass and pistols in his belt, a 
 fjarde-cMourme. The convicts were either supposed to sleep 
 soundly enough after the toils of the day not to have their 
 dreams disturbed by the tramping of the watchman, or else 
 authority in its wisdom did not care a centime whether their 
 slumbers were broken or not. But for all the lanterns and watch- 
 fulness of the guardians of the night, dark deeds were whispered, 
 plots for escape hatched, dire schemes of revenge planned and 
 matured. The seemingly chance clink of a fetter, as its wearer 
 turned on his couch of distress, veiled a watchword. A tug at a 
 coverlet became a signal. Men spoke in snoring, and shrouded 
 secret intelligence in the incoherent babble of feigned sleep. 
 Preemasons, there is a camaraderie, a Eosicrucian code among 
 convicts, defying the acutest surveillance, the most lynx-eyed supei"- 
 vision, which we wot not of. So when the sun was down Francois
 
 SISTER -MARIE DES D3ULEURS. 359 
 
 Vireloque repaired to his usual cabaret outside tlie gates, — lie was 
 not ou guard that evening, — and smoked his usual pipe, and drank 
 his usual tumbler of wine. Drams of spirit were the ordinary 
 stimulants with which the gardes-cldourme regaled themselves : 
 but they took no inconvenient notice of their comrade's absti- 
 nence. He was a sulky fellow, and had not come there for 
 nothing ; that was all they said. The disparagement mattered 
 little ; they were all well-nigh as sulky as he ; and each man had 
 doubtless as good reasons as Vireloque for being what he was. 
 
 This evening there was a fete at the cabaret. It was the 
 festival of St. Somebody, — perhaps of St. JN^icholas, patron of 
 thieves, — but at any rate the mean little wine-shop of the Etoile 
 giiifile was ai goguettcs. Yery simple decorations sufficed to give 
 it a festal appearance. There was some coloured calico about. 
 There were some tallow candles stuck in sconces. There were 
 some flowers in tin jugs, and an image of the saint in plaster of 
 Paris. Double prices were charged for everything. The landlady 
 had a new cap, and the landlord was drunk. Individually, these 
 things were not, perhaps, out of the common way. In the aggre- 
 gate they made a capital ye^e. There were ladies to add to the 
 enjoyment of the evening — ladies who danced, ladies who sang, 
 ladies who, if the truth must be told, drank and smoked as vigor- 
 ously as the male guests, and, when the festivities reached their 
 apogee, mounted the tables, and bellowed in convivial ecstasy. It 
 was difficult to say to what class of the community these ladies 
 belonged. They were perfectly virtuous. There was not the 
 slightest stain upon their reputation. They were not lorettes, 
 grisettes, dames de la Jialle, or fieuristes. They were mostly of 
 robust and athletic, build, did not occasionally disdain a pea-jacket 
 as an outer garment, knew well how to use their fists, and, better 
 still, their tongues. It would not perhaps be libellous to hint that 
 they were in some way connected with fisb, and with the docks, 
 and with carrying burdens, and generally with the commercial 
 prosperity of Belleriport. 
 
 AVith these ladies the gardes- chionrme danced in an ungainly 
 and bear-like manner. Them too they treated to cassis and other 
 cheap refreshments. "With them they joined in ranting choruses, 
 always ending with a " Tra ! la ! la ! " or a '•' youp ! youp ! youp ! " 
 
 s 2
 
 260 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Everything Avas very merry indeed ; and the landlord, after pro- 
 posing the health of Messieurs les gardes-chiourme in a few delirious 
 Avords, sank exhausted by festivity into the midst of a wreck of 
 broken bottles and battered tin jugs. The gaolers in the prison, 
 within could hear the sounds of the gay carols floating on the 
 night air, and growled bitter complaints of their unlucky lot in 
 not being able to ioin the fete. 
 
 Francois Yireloque sat aloof and smoked his pipe, as was nis 
 wont, thinking perhaps of some nautch he may have seen in the far 
 East. When one of the Bayaderes of Belleriport twitted him upon 
 his moodiness, he oflered her refreshment, but declined to dance ; 
 and at last they forbore to tease him. The clock-hand pointed to 
 nine, when he heard his name pronounced beside him. 
 
 He turned and saw a little imp named Crapaudin, a shock- 
 headed urchin, who was the orphan of a (larde-cMourme mort sur 
 le cliamp du devoir, — in other words, slain by a convict with whom 
 he was struggling in the endeavour of the latter to escape, — and 
 who was growing up the protege and adopted child of the Devil's 
 regiment. He blacked the Coramissarv's boots ; ran errands for 
 "Madame ; fetched and carried to and fro ; and looked forward to 
 becoming one day a garde-cMourme, provided always that Jiis 
 incorrigible propensities for lying and thieving did not insure him, 
 at some time or another, gratuitous board and lodging for a term 
 of years within the cJiiovrme itself as a convict. " II a une figure 
 de cour d' assises," said the Commissary of Crapudin, meaning that 
 he possessed what we might term a Central-Criminal-Court coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 " Garde-chiou7'me," said this engaging youth to Yireloque, "you 
 are wanted instantly inside." 
 
 " Wanted ! by whom ? " exclaimed Francois, rising. The blood 
 rushed to his heart. The poor captive thought, perhaps, that his 
 deliverance was at hand. 
 
 " Wanted by Sister Marie des Douleurs. A rendezvous, oho ! 
 iXuns are fond of making appointments with fine young fellows 
 such as you are. Car tu es hel liomme, garde-cldonrme.'''' 
 
 " Silence, you little reptile ! " cried Fran9ois, "or I'll Avring your 
 neck. How dare you talk in that manner of the good sisters ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I dare say. Good in the light. Bad in the light.
 
 SISTER -MAUIE DES DOULEUUS. 261 
 
 I don't like nuns. Ca n est pas gai, les sceurs (/rises. At all events, 
 she wants you immediately ; and if you don't go, she'll be sure to 
 report you to the Commissary." 
 
 " Where is the good sister, jackanapes ? " 
 
 " Jackanapes yourself. She is in the parJoir of the infirmary. 
 She is with the almoner. Perhaps they have been drinking liot wine 
 together. Ah, qiie c'est hon, Je viii chaud! Say, J/, le garde- 
 chiourme, will you treat me to a glass of mulled ordinaire before 
 you go r " 
 
 " I will treat you to a sound cuff over the ears, you young 
 monkey," replied the moody man as he paid his reckoning. "Stay, 
 here are three sous. Spend them in drink, or in tobacco, or in 
 gaming, or in anything else you choose. "Whatever it is it will 
 do vou some harm, I am sure. I <ro to obev the sister's order." 
 And so, buckling on his cutlass, he left the place. 
 
 "Three sous!" cried Crapaudin, lingering the coins which had 
 been flung to him. " That ic^n't much ; but it will buy something 
 to wash out one's windpipe with, won't it, Mother Cayenne- 
 pepper?" The landlady of the Etoile quijile was, from the fiery 
 nature of her temper, generally known among her guests by the 
 nickname of "i« Mere Foivre rouge.'" 
 
 " A-i-on jamais vu pareille vermine ? " she exclaimed, pinching 
 the boy's ear, but not by any means indignantly. " What will 
 you have that will make you \\\, pendard ? " she continued. " We 
 are en fete, and you shall be treated." Crapaudin was a favourite 
 at the caharet, and was indulged accordingly. 
 
 Meanwhile the garde-cliiourme strode with heavy footsteps 
 towards the prison-gate, gave the pass-word to the sentinel, and 
 was admitted. He knew his way well enough about the place by 
 this time ; and, passing range after range of low barrack buildings 
 with penthouse roofs and heavily-grated windows, came at last to 
 a square edifice standing alone, and looking very white and 
 ghastly in the moonlight. The windows, which were larger than 
 the ordinary ones, were not grated, but protected from sill to lintel 
 by a strong close wirework. 
 
 The parloir was a bare whitewashed room, with no other deco- 
 rations than a framed list of the rules of the infirmary and a plain 
 wooden crucifix, and no other furniture than two long forms of
 
 263 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 unpainted deal. The first among the rules was alarming. ''Sera 
 puni de la lastonnade" it ran, " tout format eonvaincu A'' avoir feint 
 une maladies Every convict detected in "malingering," or simu- 
 lating sickness, was threatened with the bastinado. 
 
 A garde-malade, — a convict with white apron and canvas sleeves 
 over his prison dress, which gave him somewhat the air of a criminal 
 cook, — was dozing on one of the benches, starting spasmodically 
 now and then, either at the pricks of his evil conscience, or at the 
 hardness of his resting-place. 
 
 "Sister Marie wants me, number five hundred," said the garde- 
 chiourme. " Where is she ? " 
 
 " She is in the dispensary," the nurse replied. " You can go 
 there to her. So she said. Que Dieu lui soit tonne ! " 
 
 It was seldom that a pious aspiration was ever uttered save by 
 the chaplain in that abode of crime and woe, yet the convict- 
 nurse, who was otherwise a most villanons rascal to look at, 
 seemed quite sincere as he bade Heaven bless Sister Marie. He 
 was under a twenty years' sentence for an atrocious crime ; yet it 
 is a fact that, as he spoke, he crossed himself. 
 
 Francois Vireloque stepped as softly as he could to the door of 
 an adjoining apartm.ent on the ground-floor, and discreetly tapped 
 thereat. It was opened by a Sister of Charity in the long, coarse, 
 black robe with heavy sleeves and white-flapped cap and wimple 
 of her order. She made the man a sign to enter, and went on 
 compounding some medicament from the bottles and gallipots 
 before her. 
 
 The light from the oil-wick, swung in an ugly cresset from a 
 chain, threw monstrous shadows from her robe and head-dress — 
 shadows that eddied in black waves over the floor. Her busy 
 hands went and came among the bottles and gallipots ; otherwise 
 her form was motionless as that of a statue. 
 
 The gorde-cMourme\\Vid. doffed his cap, and stood motionless too, 
 but in an attitude of patient respect, waiting to be spoken to. 
 
 " "What is your name, won hrave?^' she asked, in a low sweet 
 voice. 
 
 " Pran9ois Vireloque, good sister." 
 
 " So he said when he entreated me to send for you. Tou speak 
 the English languase ? "
 
 SISTER MARIE DES DOULEURS. 263 
 
 " Sufficiently well. I bave been in England." 
 
 "It is well. You must wait a little. The almoner is with 
 him now in the infirmary. He is not of our creed ; but the 
 Abbe's prayers will not be thrown away. He is very penitent. 
 We do not wish to convert him ; only to soothe his dying pillow." 
 
 She said this more to herself than to the man, and said it almost 
 in a whisper. AA^hen she had finished her task, she sat down on a 
 form like those in the jjarloir, and took out a little book, and read 
 by the light of the swinging cresset full ten minutes, moving her 
 lips meanwhile as in prayer. The garde-cliiourme stole a furtive 
 look at her. He had heard much of her good deeds, but had never 
 seen her before. Her hair, poor thing, had been ruthlessly cut off 
 according to the grim usage, her eyes were cast down, her lips 
 closed, her whole countenance composed in deep and earnest 
 devotion ; but Frangois Vireloque could tell at once that the 
 Sister of Charity was young and eminently beautiful. 
 
 Of what avail were her soft lineaments and sweet quiet manner 
 in this den ? Of much. They made savage men meek and 
 tender. They brought a spark — were :t ever so slight — of the 
 better feelings of humanity into minds seared and callous, into 
 hearts harder than the nether millstone. They brought a sunshine 
 into a place that was less shady than black as pitch with unutter- 
 able crimes and nameless horrors. They whispered the one divine 
 word, Mercy, in the midst of a Babel of threats and execrations, 
 of the groans of misery, and the shrieks of despair. 
 
 Six Sisters of Charity were permitted by the government to 
 exercise their beneficent ministrations in the infirmary of Belleri- 
 port. Beyond its precincts, and those of the closely adjoining 
 ( hapel, they never strayed. Their errand had but one purpose — 
 consolation. Of the labours, the crimes, the punishments of that 
 dire place, they knew nothing ; they only knew that when the 
 sick and suff'ering were brought to the infirmary, it was their 
 blessed function to tend them night and day, and strive their 
 utmost to heal them. Now it was a recaptured slave who had 
 been badly wounded in his mad attempt at evasion, and had been 
 brought to the hospital to die. K'ow it was some miserable wretch 
 whose frame, from neck- to loins, liad been mangled by the tarred 
 rope, — the infiiction of which still goes under the name of the
 
 204 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 " bastinado," — and was sent to the infirmary to lie on liis face, and 
 groan and screech till lint and unguent had done their work, and his 
 back was healed. And now it was some puny criminal, some 
 effeminate villain, — for crime and bodily strength go not always 
 together, — whose constitution had broken down beneath the 
 hideous toil of the Grande Fatigue, and who was glad to crawl to 
 the pallet of the infirmary to be rid of his chains and be peaceful 
 for awhile ; and find Pity at last in the arms of a Sister of Charity, 
 and of Death, the great pardoner of human sentences. 
 
 Of the six sisters whose noiseless feet were ever on the move 
 between the sick wards and the dispensary, four were elderly and 
 wrinkled, two young and fair as she upon whom the garde-chiourme 
 was looking. But Sister Marie des Douleurs was the youngest 
 and the fairest, the kindest and the best. 
 
 Anon there came down the stone staircase from above the 
 almoner, — the prison chaplain, a ruddy ecclesiastic, in orthodox 
 soutane and rahat, a worthy soul enough, who did his duty, but 
 could not help yawning sometimes as he did it. He had been so 
 long ghostly director to the scum of the earth. He had heard so 
 many lies, so many false professions of repentance. He had the 
 more justification in yawning to-night : for was not his penitent a 
 heretic, for whom, without recantation,the Church could do nothing? 
 
 He murmured as much to Sister Marie, and saying that he 
 must have his supper, went away. 
 
 Then the sister gravely beckoned to the garde-cliiourme, and 
 they went upstairs together. 
 
 The patient whom they were to visit was the convict English- 
 man. He was dying. He lay on his back, and from that quick, 
 heavy, ceaseless breathing, which came not from his lungs, but 
 from his throat rather, there could be little doubt that the sands 
 were fast running down, and that his earthly career would soon 
 be over. A convict nurse stood by him with a sponge dipped in 
 some aromatic liquid, with which he occasionally bathed the 
 temples of the moribund. An aide-cMrurgien — for the Surgeon- 
 in- Chief had given the case over, and had gone to play his evening 
 game at billiards — was seated at a little table a short distance off. 
 He too was accustomed to such scenes, and, to tell truth, was 
 reading a novel.
 
 SISTER MARIE DES DOULEURS. 205 
 
 The sister and the garde approached the bed, and the former 
 laid her hand upon the shoulder of the dying man. 
 
 " Number five hundred and thirty," she said, in her low soft 
 voice, " I have brought the person to you whom you so much 
 desired to see." 
 
 The breathing came quicker and heavier, the dull eyes opened ; 
 but there was no response. 
 
 " Call him by his name, sister," the aide-cliirurgien interposed. 
 
 " I do not know his name, M. Cantagul," Sister Marie replied. 
 
 "jS'or I scarcely. Stay, what was it the Commissary called 
 him ? Ah ! I have it— Hugh." 
 
 At the sound of the name the Englishman started up in bed, 
 and gazed about him with wild eyes. 
 
 "AVho wants me? who called Hugh?" he exclaimed in 
 guttural accents. 
 
 But dreadful sight as in his pallor and his death-sweat he was, 
 the garde-cliiourme looked well-nigh as fearful in the lamp-light. 
 For every line of his face was convulsed by horror and amazement, 
 as he kept muttering, 
 
 " Hugh ! Hugh ! who is this man tliat calls himself Hugh ? "
 
 CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 HUMBLE PIE. 
 
 "What is the proverbial disli known as " Humble Pie " made 
 of? " Sugar and spice, and all that's nice," as is suited to the 
 appetite of little girls ? " Snips and snails, and puppy-dogs' 
 tails," as beseems the ruder stomachs of little boys ? It is 
 questionable. Many consider Humble Pie to be a mere figure 
 of speech — a rhetorical viand, vrhich might furnish the table of 
 him who dines with Duke Humplirey, having previously break- 
 fasted with a Barmecide, lunched on diagrams, and filled himself 
 with the east wind. Still, there is reason to believe that Humble 
 Pie was a viand actually consumed by our great grandmothers ; 
 and taking into account the ingredients in a recipe, which the 
 writer has found in a very old volume of the Gentleman'' s Maga- 
 zine, the pie need have been by no means so untoothsome as its 
 name would imply: "Take the humbles of a deer," says the 
 recipe, — you see, there is venison for you to begin with, — and 
 then it goes on to enumerate slices of bacon, condiments, buttered 
 crust, and so forth : all things by no means suggestive of humility. 
 He who first decried Humble Pie, and libelled it as a mean and 
 shabby kind of victuals, was very probably some envious one who 
 came late to the feast, and of the succulent pasty found only the 
 pie-dish and some brown flakes of crust remaining. 
 
 The Humble Pie which the ex-curate Euthyn Pendragon was 
 invited to eat soon after his departure from Swordsley was, however, 
 the metaphorical, and not the dainty dish. He looked at it with 
 loathing, but dreaded lest he might have to eat it perforce, as 
 Pistol ate his leek, — fortune cudgelling him the while, — and had 
 he not been a clergyman, he might have said, again with ancient 
 Pistol, " I eat, and eke I swear," Not but that I think swearing 
 to be quite practicable without verbal maledictions. Good man-
 
 HUMBLE PIE. 267 
 
 nets have banislaed oaths from the drawing-room and the dinner- 
 table ; but pray, did you never see the master of the house look a 
 very unmistakable malison at the servants if the side-dishes were 
 not handed round properly, or the wines were corked ? Did you 
 never detect your charming neighbour in the ocular utterance of 
 at least a score naughty words, when, by unskilful carving, you 
 have given her the wings of a bird which would not enable her to 
 fly away, or when in the dance it has been your misfortune to 
 tread on and tear one of her liundred-and-fifty flounces ? We 
 are commanded not to swear at all ; but having stifled the (/ros 
 mots, let us carry out the good work by putting a bit between our 
 teeth, lest they too should grind themselves in mute curses ; let 
 us put a bearing-rein on our shoulders, lest they should shrug, 
 and a kicking-strap on our fingers, lest they should be clenched in 
 rage, and especially blinkers over our eyes, far too prone as they 
 are, on slight provocation, to dart malignant expletives to the 
 right and to the left. 
 
 So Suthvn Pendrasron, beinjj reverend, did not swear — at least 
 out loud ; but his brow grew darker, and his eye fiercer, and he 
 bit his lip more closely every day. It is a hard fight, that tussle 
 with the strong, rich, well-backed-up world — and you all untrained, 
 underfed, and friendless ; you think you may win the contest by 
 science and finish. Well, if you be wondrous wise, you may do 
 so ; but in general the brute force of your opponent carries the 
 day, and one swashing blow from the Hercules you are battling 
 with sends you sprawling. And pray mark the philosophy in the 
 rhyme of the nursery hero, who was "wondrous wise:" He 
 jumped into a quickset hedge, and scratched out both his eyes ; 
 that is to say, he got into difficulties ; he was broken, ruined, sold 
 up ; he went to the dogs ; his enemies exulted, and said, " There 
 is an end of our friend. It is all up with him. We always 
 thought so." Indeed : the man's wondrous wisdom came to his 
 aid ; for by mere force of marvellous sagacity and strong will, did 
 he not scratch Ms eyes in again ? 
 
 Euthyn Pendragon found that of his own motion he had thrown 
 up the means of earning a decent and reputable livelihood. He 
 had got nothing in exchange but a gratuitous scat at an ordinary, 
 at which the staple in the bill of fare was Humble Pie. Where-
 
 2G8 THE SEVEN SOXS OF MAMMON. 
 
 soever he turued, he found the detested dish paraded before him. 
 It was Humble Pie hot and Humble Pie cold ; Humble Pie roast 
 and boiled \pdte a Vlmmble se)-viteicr, and not at all li lafinanciere. 
 He was haunted bv the ghost of this grim victual, not knowing 
 ■what day his resolution might fail, and he be compelled to devour 
 it ravenously. He had determined not to be a curate any more. 
 He had said to the church at Swordsley that henceforth it was to 
 be a struggle between it and him. But he meant a grander and 
 more potent Church when he apostrophised the humble little 
 structure of St. Mary-la-Douce. The most abhorred form that 
 Humble Pie could assume, was in his being possiblj' driven to ask 
 the Eeverend Ernest Goldthorpe for testimonials as to his moral 
 character, — for the Eector of Swordsley would scarcely refuse him 
 those, — and seek, if he were pressed by want, for another curacy. 
 Before he would do that, he thought, he would hang himself. 
 What ! abase himself in the sight of the supercilious High 
 Churchman, at whose little follies and weaknesses he, with his 
 great, strong, logical mind, had so often laughed ! "What ! humi- 
 liate himself in the sight of the proud and scornful lady who, for 
 a mere declaration of love, had treated him as one would treat a 
 lacquey that had stolen spoons! Ko ; sooner the suicide's halter, 
 the suicide's opium bottle, than that. All was over between him 
 and the vocation for which he had so carefully trained himself. 
 He had torn his cassock and rent his bands, he said to himself, 
 irrevocably. The arrow was shot ; the battle had commenced, and 
 the strongest should win. 
 
 He had very little money, and a fortnight in London brought 
 him well nigh to the lowest ebb. He found that lodging, even in 
 a mean hotel in a back-street of Blackfriars, was too expensive for 
 him. He tried a Temperance Coffee-house, which was very dirty 
 and very expensive, and that too proved beyond his means. He 
 sought at very many private houses, but could not hear of a 
 decent sleeping-room under six or seven shillings a week. He 
 began to part with his clothes, which were few and of no great 
 account, and with his books, which were numerous, and in some 
 sort valuable. He had many college prizes, with the old arms 
 emblazoned on the covers ; many expensive editions of the classics, 
 to purchase which he had denied himself many a meal j and not a
 
 HUMBLE PIE. 2Ct) 
 
 few choice volumes presented to him by old college friends. Away 
 went Elzevirs and Aldines. Away went college prizes. Away 
 went Liddell and Scott, and the Corpus Poetarum. With great 
 fear and trembling he had first essayed to pawn his library, as he 
 had been prudent enough to do with his clothes ; but he found 
 that the pawnbrokers would scarcely lend the value of their 
 weight in paper on them, and that one pair of pantaloons was 
 worth three lexicons. With secret rage and anguish he began 
 selling his beloved folios. He certainly got more by their vendi- 
 tion outrifjht : but the sacrifice was still enormous. The second- 
 hand booksellers in Holborn and Holywell Street told him that 
 Grreek and Latin books were worth scarcely anything now ; and 
 the prices they allowed certainly gave an ex parte confirmation to 
 their opinion. One candid bookvcndor, indeed, who rejoiced 
 much in the sale of albums and gifc-books, told him that he only 
 bought his volumes for their "jackets," meaning their handsome 
 bindings ; and that so long as he could keep a stock of books 
 well bound in vellum or tooled morrocco, he could find customers, 
 who would not care if the book itself was the Iliad or the Keep- 
 sake for 1836. "The greatest Hauthor of the Hage, Sir," 
 remarked this worthy tradesman, " next to the gent that signs the 
 fi'pun' notes, is 'Ayday. Hanything with 'Ayday's name to it is 
 sure to sell." And when Euthyn Pendragon parted with a book 
 "bound by Hayday," he dined somewhat more copiously than 
 was his wont. 
 
 He led a perfectly solitary life. To not one of his old friends, 
 although many were wealthy and influential, did he care to appeal, 
 either for assistance or advice. If he met them in the street, he 
 did his best to avoid them, or at most returned a furtive or sullen 
 response to their greetings. Euthyn had preserved just tliis link 
 of connection with the world, as, when he left Swordsley, to 
 desire that all letters which arrived for him after his departure 
 might be forwarded to the Chapter Coffee-house in St. Paul's 
 Churchyard. That hostelry has been long since pulled down ; 
 but at the date to which this story refers the Chapter was a queer, 
 rambling place, with a darkling coflee-room and several mouldy 
 old waiters, who were supposed to remember the Great Pire of 
 London, and that Cathedral of St. Paul which was Gothic, and
 
 270 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 not Corinthian. It was a great bouse of call for parsons more or 
 less dilapidated, who plied for hire there in a not much less overt 
 manner than did the red-nosed and white-aproned ticket-porters 
 at the entrance to Doctors' Commons, hard by. Yet the Chapter 
 Coffee-house had its fasti, literary as well as theological ; for did 
 not poor Charlotte Bronte and her sister stay there when they 
 came to London after the wonderful success of that most marvel- 
 lous book Jane Eyre ? 
 
 Every other day or so Pendragon looked in at the Chapter for 
 his letters. A good many came. There were offers of help, which 
 he deliberately tore up. There was a curt note from the Eeverend 
 Ernest, informing him that, although they had parted in anger, 
 their differences had in no way impaired the esteem he enter- 
 tained for Mr. Pendragon's character, and that if his recommenda- 
 tion could be of any service to Mr. P. at any future stage of his 
 career, it was very heartily at his service. Not for many years 
 afterwards was the ex-curate to know at whose instance this letter 
 was written, or by whose hand it was dropped into the letter-box 
 of the Swordsley post-office. There was another note, too, in a 
 bold, dashing scrawl, with plenty of blots and plenty of capital 
 letters, in which L. S. informed E. P. that she thought H. M. 
 was sorry for having used him so cruelly, and that matters might 
 yet be mended if he "squared" the Rector. And the epistle 
 wound up by reminding him that he had always a friend in need 
 in the person of Lord Chalkstonehengist. But I don't think his 
 Lordship wrote the letter, and I. think that Euthyn Pendragon 
 knew perfectly well who did. 
 
 He kept both these letters for a day or two, often re-perusing 
 them, and musing over their contents. But that unlucky flavour 
 of Humble Pie pervaded both. He tore the E-everend Ernest 
 Goldthorpe's note into very symmetrical little bits, and having, 
 for his own solace and satisfaction, trampled them under foot, he 
 collected the fragments, and flung them in a handful to the ducks 
 in the ornamental water in St. James's Park. The ducks ate 
 them, as they will eat anything, — bread crumbs, cigar-ends, or 
 tenpenny nails ; and it is to be hoped that their omnivorous 
 stomachs derived benefit from the conciliatory expressions of the 
 Eector of Swordsley.
 
 HUMBLE PIE. 271 
 
 Letter number two Euthyn did not treat quite so cavalierly. 
 He returned no answer to it ; but he kept it about him, at first 
 in his pocket-book, whence, findiug that its cJiuers were getting 
 frayed, he transferred it to his bosom. I think he sewed it up in 
 a glove which did not belong to him, and which he had acquired 
 in a surreptitious and — for a clergyman — somewhat dishonest 
 manner, and then he hung the little packet round his neck by a 
 silken string, and felt that when he was laid in liis grave he 
 should wish to have that short blotted letter next his heart. 
 
 All this time he was very strenuously striving to earn his 
 livelihood ; for his means were very exigent, and he felt that his 
 scanty stock of ready money would hold out but a little time 
 longer. "When he first went to the Chapter, he used to take a 
 dish of tea there ; but soon he began to grudge the cost of that 
 luxury, and was fain to shamble past the waiter, and ask in a 
 shamefaced manner at the bar for his letters. The waiters con- 
 temned him accordingly, and soon began to look upon him as a kind 
 of hedge-parson or hackney-chaplain, who would do any absentee's 
 duty, and preach some one else's sermon for ten shillings and a 
 dinner. " If I am doomed to eat that kind of Humble Pie," 
 thought Euthyn Pendragon, " I shall have to hire a gown and a 
 surplice, for I have parted with both." He had by this time but 
 one suit of what may be termed clerical undress uniform, and 
 it had grown wofully shabby and white at the seams. He had 
 never acquired that art — in which some young curates are so 
 expert — of tying his cravat in a captivating manner; and now, 
 when he could only afford two clean ones in a Aveek, the ill- 
 knotted kerchief gave him a more slovenly appearance than 
 ever. Walking — prowling down Whitehall, rather — one morn- 
 ing, Euthyn Pendragon met a Bishop. His Lordship was pro- 
 bably on his way to the Athenaeum, from some visit he had paid to 
 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners or the Home Secretary. Perhaps 
 he had been sitting in Convocation. There he was, plump, rosy, 
 trimly-shaven, aproned, shovel-hatted, and silk-stockinged ; one of 
 the most prosperous-looking descendants, perhaps, of the Twelve 
 who were bidden to set no store by worldly wealtli, that you 
 could light upon in a summer's day. He quickened his pace as 
 the disconsolate curate approached ; and his episcopal trot almost
 
 273 THK SEVEN SONS OE MAMMON. 
 
 became a run as, with averted face, he hastened towards King 
 Charles's statue. Why did his Lordship avoid his needy brother? 
 Pendragon concluded that it was through pride, and that this 
 was some lucky college Don who had just exchanged his trencher- 
 cap for a mitre, and who, having known him in the old days, 
 was ashamed to be recognised by so very shabby (albeit, dearly 
 beloved) a brother. Alas, how little we know of one another's 
 motives ! The Eight Eeverend Timothy Stephen, Lord Bishop 
 of Eougemullet (Portsoakin Palace, Binnsborough, is the epis- 
 co2)al residence), was one of the most charitable prelates on the 
 bench, and had he known Mr. Pendragon, or had he been properly 
 recommended to him, would have done everything in his power 
 to assist a deserving object, but the plain truth must be told : — 
 the Bishop was being continually made the victim of persons who 
 imposed on his benevolence by fictitious tales of woe, and, being 
 exceedingly short-sighted, had mistaken the shabby curate for 
 one Chowsleton, who affected the clerical garb, but who was a 
 notorious begging-letter impostor, and had bled the good Bishop 
 many a time and oft. 
 
 Although he disdained to seek employment in that Church 
 against which he had set his face, Pendragon was not too haughty 
 to try for a situation as usher in a school. He advertised once or 
 twice, although the shillings he had to disburse were as so many 
 drops of his heart's blood, and he received a few answers in return. 
 They were all worthless. One schoolmaster wanted an assistant 
 who was perfectly conversant with Hebrew, Hi^dostani, and 
 Tamil, could play on the harmonium, and take charge of the boys 
 during school-hours, for twenty pounds per annum. Another 
 required an awakened Christian, who could lecture upon chemistry, 
 had some knowledge of therapeutics, and was willing to serve for 
 a year without any salary. A third suggested that literary accom- 
 plishments were less an object than a thorough acquaintance with 
 calisthenics and gymnastic exercises, and a military character; from 
 which Pendragon inferred that his correspondent wanted a drill- 
 sergeant, and not an usher. While a fourth, writing from Broom- 
 back Scrubs, Perulum, Yorkshire, plainly informed the advertiser 
 that he wanted an usher who was a " cappital skollar," — so wrote 
 the Yorkshire preceptor, — and " was akkustumed to hoarses." " I
 
 HUMBLE PIE. 273 
 
 sliould not mind being a groom," thought Pendragon; " but if I 
 became one, I would rather ride after Miss Salusbury in the park 
 than fill up my leisure by teaching little boys, and rubbing my 
 master's horse down." 
 
 There was nothing to be got out of the scholastic profession. 
 He called on a firm in a dingy street of the Strand who had an 
 " Educational Eegistry," and professed to procure situations for 
 ushers and tutors ; but the firm, represented by a bald-headed 
 man with a red face, who had something to do with corn and coals, 
 and companies and matrimonial agencies, as well as with education, 
 talked so much about the commission he expected, that liuthyn 
 fled from him in terror. Then he took to answering advertise- 
 ments, but with an equal want of success. He applied for clerk- 
 ships to employers who told him they would be glad to engage him 
 at a rising salary if he would advance the sum of two hundred and 
 fifty pounds on undeniable security, and bearing interest at the rate 
 of fifteen per cent, per annum. He was tempted by announcements 
 that he could clear a handsome income as canvasser for the sale of 
 an article in general demand, and found that town-travellers were 
 wanted for a powder to kill fleas, and a liquid tliat washed linen 
 (and burnt holes in it par dessus le marcM) without soap or water. 
 He was informed, always through the medium of the newspapers, 
 that he could be taught) in common with other ladies and gentle- 
 men, and in six lessons) an accomplishment by which from three 
 to five pounds a week could be realised. He sent, as requested, 
 balf-a-crown's worth of postage-stamps to a given address, and 
 received, by return of post, an envelope containing a dirty scrap 
 of paper, on which some absurd recipes for painting on leather 
 and modelling wax-flowers were written in a schoolboy hand. The 
 dupes were to send their postage-stamps to a certain number in 
 Coger's Inn, Strand, AY.C, and it is not improbable that a party 
 by the name of Sims may have had something to do with teaching 
 those accomplishments by which from three to five pounds a week 
 might be realised. 
 
 He wrote to the secretaries of one or two literary institutions, 
 offering to deliver lectures. He was politely informed in return 
 that the services of gentlemen unknown to the public were not 
 available, but that the lectui-e-theatre of the institution could be
 
 274 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 engaged for so many pounds per night. He haunted a few law- 
 stationers' shops about the Temple and Lincoln's Inn, in the hope 
 of obtaining some work in copying legal documents. He wrote a 
 bold, nervous hand, but it was loose and irregular. A friendly 
 law-stationer in Carey Street, having glanced over his best speci- 
 mens of caligraphy, was good enough to say to him, " Look here ; 
 you see these two folios, don't you? Ain't they beautifully 
 written ? Ain't the upstrokes and downstrokes nice ? Ain't 
 they like copper-plate ? Tou see this indenture ? it's on parch- 
 ment. Ain't the engrossing first-rate ? Did vou ever see black 
 letter done better than that ? "Well, all this writing's done by a 
 chap that lives in a garret in Bear Yard, and oftener sleeps on a 
 doorstep than at home. He drinks a pint and a half of spirits 
 every day, and will die iu the hospital most likely. He's the 
 beautifullest writer and the biggest vagabond I know. "When 
 you've learnt a good law hand — it won't take you more than six 
 months — 3fou may come to me again, and if you want employment 
 you shall have it ; though between you and me, I think you'd 
 better take a broom and sweep a crossing than go to law-writing." 
 And treasuring up this valuable advice in his heart, Mr. Pendragon 
 bade adieu to Carey Street. 
 
 "An odd thing, wasn't it, for a clergyman to want a copying 
 job ? " remarked the law-stationer to his wife, shortly afterwards. 
 " He was shocking seedy, but he had the real parson-cut about 
 him. I suppose he's taken to drinking, or gone to smash some- 
 how, or done something bad, and the bishop has taken his gown 
 away. Poor fellow ! " 
 
 So nothing was wanting to tlie humiliation of Huthyn Pen- 
 dragon ; not even the compassion of a commander of quill- 
 drivers, — not even the pity of this man of pleas, and pounce, and 
 parchment. 
 
 Wandering through Soho one day, as being the locality where 
 he thought the cheapest lodgings might be obtained, but revolving 
 iu his mind, meanwhile, whether the displacement of so much 
 water, covering so much of the reeds and ooze of the Thames at 
 Twickenham, by casting himself therein, might not be about the 
 cheapest lodging he could find, Pendragon came upon a caravan- 
 serai which suited his lean purse. It was a kind of model lodging-
 
 HUMBLE PIK. 275 
 
 house, — not one of the imposing structures in red-brick with stone 
 dressings which the Society for Improving the Dwellings of the 
 Labouring Classes have since set up here and there in London, 
 but an old warehouse or factory, which a few well-wishers of their 
 kind had furnished in a rough-and-ready manner for the accom- 
 modation of men of scanty means. They had called it a model 
 lodging-house at first ; but they found the term distasteful to the 
 tenants, — poverty has its proper, as well as its improper, side, — so 
 the name was changed to that of the Monmouth Chambers, and 
 thenceforth its cabins filled wonderfully. They were in truth 
 cabins ; for space was of great value in the house, and its distri- 
 bution a matter of cunning arrangement ; and so every room on 
 every floor had been partitioned ofi' by boards, not reaching within 
 some fourteen inches to the ceiling, into so many numbered nooks, 
 a narrow passage running between. Each cabin, however, had its 
 door and its lock. The furniture was simple, but suflicient. A 
 little iron bedstead, a peg or two for clothes, a locker to hold small 
 personal chattels,— and these were all. To each floor was attached 
 a lavatorv ; and on the basement was a kitchen where the lodgers 
 could cook their victuals, and clean their boots in the adjoining 
 area. There was a room for them to eat in, and a large reading- 
 room supplied with daily and weekly papers and periodicals, and 
 containing a fair library of books. There the inmates sat and 
 read or wrote, or played at chess or draughts, or brooded over 
 their prospects and their poverty. There was even a smoking- 
 room, from which only the introduction of spirits was prohibited. 
 The taboo was merely for form's sake ; for the Monmouthians 
 were no topers, and a roysterer would have died there of dulness 
 in a week. A steward, or "Econome," as the Russians call him, 
 managed the discipline of the place ; and all its advantages 
 were to be enjoyed for three-and-sixpence a week, paid in 
 advance. 
 
 Euthyn Pendragon eagerly availed himself of a vacant cabin in 
 the Monmouth Chambers. By disposing of every superfluoiis 
 article in his possession, he had managed to scrape together about 
 four pounds. This sum, he said to himself, must enable him to 
 hold out for six weeks, and then if no succour came he must do — 
 he knew not what ; but he was certain that something must be 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMJION. 
 
 done. A carpet-bag held now his linen and the few needments 
 for his toilet and studies, — his Bible, his Greek Testament, his 
 favourite Horace (it was too ragged to sell), his Paley's JEvidences, 
 and his Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of PropJiesi/ing. How many 
 times had he devoured that eloquent treatise ? how many times 
 asked mentally, " Shall not I too have liberty of prophesying — of 
 preaching the Word — the Word that has flesh and blood in it, and 
 is not merely so many shrivelled sinews and dry bones ? " The 
 house was full, and, like every other house where many people 
 dwelt, was split up into cliques. There was the kitchen party, — 
 reduced tradesmen, old worn-out clerks and commission-agents, — 
 whose chief amusement and employment were in pottering over 
 messes made from cheap scraps, and in squabbling over the rever- 
 sions of places for their saucepans and fryingpans. They seldom 
 ventured aboveground, but burrowed, like the farrier in Kenil- 
 worth. They seemed to have very little to eat, yet to be always 
 breakfasting, dining, and supping. 
 
 There were two foreign parties, socially as well as politically 
 divided, hating each other cordially. One was monarchical, the 
 other republican. In the cofiee-room all day long, and as far into 
 the night as the rules of the house would permit (save only on 
 occasions that will afterwards be referred to), toiled at a Dictionary 
 a snuffy little old French gentleman, who had been a marquis. 
 Had been, I say, — for, abating his snuff", and two weak eyes poring 
 over the hard words, and a trembling hand that transcribed them, 
 and a meagre little carcase swathed in a woful dressing-gown of 
 striped flannel, he belonged wholly to the past tense. Feebly, 
 very feebly burnt the last drops of oil in that rusted, battered 
 lamp for which Time, the great marine-store dealer, waited with 
 growing impatience. O Beauty, he is waiting for your diamond- 
 head lustre ! brilliant youth, he is waiting for your flashing 
 gig-lamps ! O Mammon, he is waiting for your golden cande- 
 labra ! virgins wise and virgins foolish, he is waiting for all 
 your lamps to burn out, that he may add them to his heap of rags, 
 and bones, and old metal : — among which, there is but one thing 
 keen and bright, — his own sharp consuming sickle. But render 
 grace for that a greater magician there is than Time — a magician 
 who gives us new lamps for old ones — lamps that are never to
 
 HUMBLE PIE. 277 
 
 burn low or wax pale, or cast loweriug shadows, but shall be firmly 
 stayed upon everlasting tripods. 
 
 Very long hours the little old Frenchman slaved at the Dic- 
 tionary, Now and again he would take a. bundle of manuscripts 
 out with him (having previously donned, for walking-costume, a 
 kind of woollen sack of olive green, very ragged, in lieu of the 
 flannel dressing-gown). Sometiuies he would come back with a 
 little brightness in the weak eyes. Then his companions knew 
 that he had been receiving money, had been paid for some portion 
 of his labour, or had been permitted to draw half-a-sovereign on 
 account. Then he would feed, poorly enough. Heaven knows ! on 
 little scraps of cook-shop meat, and ha'porths of bread, and sugar, 
 and coifee, screwed up ia odd little cocked hats of paper, — but 
 still feed and satisfy his meagre appetite. More frequently, he 
 would return quite penniless, and with an additional redness in 
 the eyes. It was conjectured then that the hard bookseller in 
 Holborn, who some day or another was to publish the Dictionary, 
 had taken exception to the manner in which his task had been 
 performed, had bidden him recommence, and had refused him an 
 advance. He never complained, and, valiantly enough, would try 
 to gird himself to his task again, but generally went to bed, and 
 lay there some ten hours, half-starving and crying, until the 
 steward would batter at his door with knuckles of authoritv, and 
 tell him that it was against the regulations of the chambers to lie 
 a-bed by day, — thus routing the poor old Dictionary-maker from 
 his lair ; but only to press some coppers into his hand, or force 
 him to come and share his dinner in the little panelled cabin which 
 he called his lodge. The steward was a big-boned man, full six 
 feet high, who had been a boatswain's mate on board a man-of-war, 
 and had, I doubt not, handled many a rope's end in his time ; but 
 he had a heart as soft as toast-and-butter, and was governed by a 
 shrewish little wife not much bigger than a Dutch doll, who, on 
 her part, was governed by a baby diminutive but insubordinate, 
 a baby that, without much difficulty, might have been put Lato a 
 quart pot. 
 
 It was mean and ignoble for a foreign nobleman to live in a 
 model lodging-house, among next door to paupers, and cry when 
 he could not get any money from a bookseller, was it not ? But
 
 278 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 it was difficult to avoid pitying him. He was so old and so broken. 
 Two-and-seventy years had passed over his head. It was very 
 long since he was born, — years before the great Eevolution, — heir 
 to an historic name and to vast estates. Why, he was eleven years 
 of age when his father, mother, sisters, almost every relative he 
 had, were guillotined by Kobespierre. Why, he was past thirty 
 wlien at the downfall of Xapoleon the old abbe who had sheltered 
 him and brought him to England told him that it was time to 
 return to France, and pay his court to Louis the Kestored, and 
 take possession of his long-sequestered inheritance. But he never 
 got his broad acres back. They had been swallowed up among 
 the Domaines Nationauoc, and the new grantees stuck to them. 
 He managed to get places, employments, was a captain in the 
 Gardes du Corps, — this poor little shrivelled old Dictionary-maker; 
 but at last came 1830, and down he came again, never to rise any 
 more. His days of prosperity had been few and transient. The 
 morning of his life was misery ; the noontide was capricious and 
 showery ; the night threatened to be as miserable as the com- 
 mencement. He has been dead, I should surmise, this poor old 
 barnacle de la vieille roclie, these many years ; and I don't think 
 that he ever finished the Dictionary. 
 
 Euthyn Pendragon would have made advances to this decayed 
 old gentleman, but he was almost too weak and nervous for con- 
 versation, and, like some animal or neglected child long accustomed 
 to ill-treatment, winced and drew back, even when you spoke to 
 him kindly, as though he expected, as a matter of course, that the 
 word would be accompanied by a blow. There was another old 
 Frenchman, with a closely cropped head and long moustache — ■ 
 both as white as snow — who wore a discoloured ribbon at his 
 button-hole, and was addressed as Colonel. He was a Legitimist, 
 but for pure love of his country had preferred serving in the grand 
 army under Napoleon to remaining inactive or to emigrating. He 
 taught fencing when any one would take lessons of him, and, 
 when they wouldn't, coloured engravings for a livelihood. He 
 was of a somewhat boisterous temperament, however, and pre- 
 ferred taking bis evening solace at an ill-conditioned little cofFee- 
 shop in the neighbourhood, frequented chiefly by foreign gentle- 
 men in diSculties, where until late at night you could hear the
 
 HUMBLE PIE. 279 
 
 jingling of domiuoes, and the wrangling of politicians wlio never 
 could agree. 
 
 The foreign democratic element had also a shelter at the 
 Chambers, and a very bearded, restless, uncomfortable element 
 it was, with apparently as great a hatred to paying its rent in 
 advance, laving itself with soap and water, refraining from smoking 
 tobacco in its bed-chambers, and otherwise conforming to the 
 rules of the establishment, as to tyranny and military coercion. 
 The foreign democratic element was always squabbling with the 
 steward, and now and then endeavoured (mutually) to bruise and 
 stab itself, accusing itself (mutually) of being a traitor and spy in 
 the employ of tyrants. Euthyn Pendragon avoided the foreign 
 democratic element, then, as all men in their senses would act 
 wisely in avoiding it now. 
 
 Of English lodgers — British, rather, for there were Scotchmen 
 and Welshmen among them — there was a suflBciently curious 
 variety. All kinds of waifs and strays had drifted to this lone 
 shore, and lay here in a tangled heap of shingle and seaweed. It 
 was certain that few of them could see worse, but it was generally 
 understood that many of them had seen better, days. There was 
 a tall and old man who had been at one time the possessor of a 
 large fortune. He talked of the days when he had been in the 
 commission of the peace, and kept a pack of hounds. He always 
 posted, he said, from AVarrington to London, and with four horses, 
 in defiance of the London and North-Western Eailway, which he 
 considered as a dangerous innovation. He had been an extrava- 
 gant man, and boasted of some orgie he had had in George the 
 Fourth's days, when he had dammed up a fountain, and made 
 punch in the basin. Nobody believed this : but few refused to 
 place credence in the report that he had been a very wicked old 
 fellow, who had wasted his substance in riotous living, broken his 
 wife's heart, and turned his children out of doors. Of his fortune 
 nothing was left now but two or three Chancery suits. He had 
 lain long in the Eleet and in the Bench for contempt, and for costs, 
 and other offences against the High Court at Lincoln's Inn, until 
 at last Chancery itself had got tired of him, and Lord Brougham, 
 one fine morning in his chancellorship, had inexorably, but merci- 
 fully, turned him out. It was an equal mercy when he discovered
 
 280 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 the chambers, a quiet place where he could live for next to nothing, 
 and grumble at his ease, and even find an audience to listen to his 
 " case," and sympathise with his grievances. How he managed 
 to live was no small mystery ; but he had plenty of bundles of 
 yellow dog-eared papers left, and there appears to be some power 
 of living by suction given to Chancery suitors, and which makes 
 their interminable papers a source of nutriment to them. At 
 least Clidger, that was the tall suitor's name, managed to rub 
 along, and to find stationery wherewith perpetually to memorialise, 
 petition, and otherwise bore almost to desperation the Lord Chan- 
 cellor who was in, and the Lord Chancellor who was out, and the 
 rising lawyer who was supposed to have a chance of becoming 
 Lord Chancellor some day or anothei*, — to say nothing of the 
 Yice- Chancellors, the daily and weekly newapapers, and the 
 Houses of Lords and Commons. 
 
 Tliere was Tottlepot, too. Tottlepot had been a lieutenant in 
 the JMarines, a coal-merchant, and a schoolmaster, and now 
 existed on a small annual pension granted him by his brother, a 
 clergyman in Somersetshire, on the express condition that he 
 should never come within twenty-five miles of his residence. 
 Tottlepot's three great misfortunes were, that he had once been a 
 very handsome man, and still considered himself (he was fifty) to 
 be so ; that he was intolerably conceited ; and that he wrote a 
 very bold, legible, and symmetrical hand. These circumstances 
 concurred in making the unhappy wretch believe that he was a 
 poet. He wrote rhyme continually, on every kind of subject, 
 and in every kind of metre. That which he indited was so 
 legible, that he found no difiiculty in reading it aloud, on all 
 occasions, in a disgustingly flowing and sonorous voice — couplet 
 after couplet, and stanza after stanza. Had he stammered or 
 boggled over it, the man might have entertained some doubt as to 
 his poetic faculty ; but rolling out his verses as he could, and did, 
 by the hundred dozen, he had not the remotest shadow of un- 
 certainty as to his great and transcendent genius. A man to be 
 avoided, struck dumb with a sledgehammer, or struck dumb at 
 any rate, was Tottlepot, late of the Marines, the Coal Exchange, 
 and the Scholastic Profession. He spoke of himself, now rever- 
 ently, affectionately, soothingly, as the "poor poet," — and now
 
 HUMBLE PIE. 281 
 
 arrogantly and boastfully as one ■with a divine inheritance, cue 
 who had stolen fire from Heaven, Sir, and suffered for it, like 
 Prometheus. If the newspapers were late, he recorded their 
 tardiness in a sonnet. He wrote poems on fine days, on wet days, 
 and on foggy ones. He described a cold in his head, or a corn 
 that he had cut, in the Spenserian stanza, and when he had a 
 disagreement with the steward, which was about twice in every 
 three days, withered that functionary, to his own — Tottlepot's — 
 thinking, in Popeian heroics. Who has not known these in- 
 sufferably vain and empty men, who, on the strength of much 
 wordiness and a half-clouded intellect, turn down their collars, 
 neglect to comb their hair, or fulfil their responsibilities in this 
 life, and give themselves ovit as Poets ? Did they ever abound 
 more than at present ? "Will some kind, real satirist be good 
 enough to come forward and fustigate them into a sense of sliame, 
 and a knowledge of their own position as average rate-paying 
 Christians ? Was there ever a time when they more needed the 
 warning hammered into them half a century since by one who 
 was no poet, but w'ho, unless I greatly err, has since become one 
 of the greatest men of letters, lawyers, and sages that the world 
 has seen ? Say, was it Brougham, or was it Jeffrey, who wrote, 
 " We really cannot permit all the shallow coxcombs who languish 
 under the burden of existence to take themselves for spell-bound 
 geniuses. The most powerful stream, indeed, will stagnate the 
 most deeply, and will burst out to more wild devastation when 
 obstructed in its peaceful course; but thev/eakly current is, upon 
 the whole, more liable to obstruction, and will mantle and rot, at 
 least, as dismally as its betters. The innumerable blockheads, 
 in short, who betake themselves to suicide, dram-drinking, and 
 dozing in dirty nightcaps, will not allow us to suppose that there 
 is any real connection between ennui and talent, or that fellows 
 who are fit for nothing better than mending shoes or cracking 
 stones may not be very miserable if they are unfortunately raised 
 above their proper occupations."* 
 
 Tottlepot and Clidger, — the one with his poetry, the other with 
 his grievances, — together with the silent misery of the little old 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, 1818.
 
 282 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 suufiy Marquis de la Vieille Eoche, and the beards and bluster of 
 the foreign democratic element, were not very conducive to 
 Euthyn Pendragon's peace of mind. But for the cheapness of 
 the chambers, he might have been speedily tempted to leave 
 them ; but he found companions less demonstrative, and, ulti- 
 mately, two or three almost congenial to his ways of thought. 
 There was a quiet population of broken-down tradesmen, clerks 
 timeworn and shattered, yet still able to scrape a weekly subsist- 
 ence by making up the books of butchers and tailors in the 
 evening, and collecting debts. There were a few small commission- 
 agents, who were satisfied with their legitimate gains, and there- 
 fore did not prosper much. There was a reduced farmer named 
 Cherfit — one of those sad spectacles, a fat man grown thin, and 
 whose skin was as baggy as the clothes he wore. A great specu- 
 lation in corn, or liops, or clover, had made him bankrupt ; but he 
 had not lost his equanimity. He calmly remembered the days 
 when he used to farm a. thousand acres ; was perfectly contented 
 with criticising the points of the cab and cart horses he saw 
 passing the window ; was almost an infallible judge of the 
 weather ; was a staunch Protectionist, and assiduously perused 
 the prices current of those markets whose fluctuations were 
 nothing to him now. Add to these, if you please, a dapper little 
 man, whose name was, aptly enough, Mr. Smart, who had taught 
 writing, arithmetic, and the use of the globes any time these fifty 
 years in ladies' schools, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Camber- 
 well and Kensington ; a wan, sunburnt man, who had been agent 
 for a Chinese opium house at Canton for many years, who had 
 not made a fortune out of that trafiic, and was suspected of 
 habitually chewing the narcotic drug in which he had once dealt ; 
 and a superannuated theatrical prompter, whose sight was now too 
 bad to enable him to " hold the book," who was, to his great good 
 luck, " on the Pund," and who Avas looked upon as an infallible 
 authority as to new pieces and first appearances : he never went 
 to the theatre, but attended the performances through the inter- 
 mediary of a newspaper, and always with a saving clause, dis- 
 paraging to the present state of the drama, and laudatory of 
 those glorious days when John Kemble and Jack Bannister, Joey 
 Munden and Jerry Sneak Eussell, flourished. In what manner
 
 HUMBLE pii;. 283 
 
 of gyrations do people flourish, I wonder? — angularly, or in 
 curves, or in "parabolic envelopes," as that unexpected comet, 
 the other dav, is said to have done. 
 
 Ah ! let me not forget ; there was an artist, too, at the cham- 
 bers. His name was Clere ; — John Clere — nothing more. He 
 was so desperately poor, and so painfully struggling an artist, that 
 he should properly have lived in a garret, worn a threadbare black- 
 velvet coat, continually smoked a short pipe, abused the Hanging 
 Committee of the Eoyal Academy, and the extortionate race of 
 picture-dealers, and lain on his back all day on a flock-bed, waiting 
 for patronage. He did nothing at all of the kind. Although not 
 three-and-twenty years of age, he never smoked, and did not even 
 wear a moustache ; noi*, although his hair was of an auburn hue, 
 and abundant in quantity, did he part it down the middle, torture 
 it into ringlets, or allow it to flow over the collar of his coat 
 behind. He avowed, with much simplicity, that he was the son 
 of a butcher at j^orwich, that he had been bred at a charity- 
 school, and, disliking the paternal calling, was on the eve of being 
 apprenticed to a shoemaker, when he thought that he would come 
 to London and see if he could earn a crust by the exercise of that 
 taste for drawing which he had shown, chiefly in chalk and slate- 
 pencil, from the very earliest days that he had worn a mufiin-cap 
 and leathers. At St.AVackleburga's charity-school he had learned 
 to read and write imperfectly ; all the rest he had taught himself. 
 He was fortunate enough to arrive in the great town, a/aw lad, in 
 1845, when there was a great railway mania. More iron roads were 
 projected than there w^ere towns and villages, almost, for them to 
 connect with one another. Certain standine: orders of Parliament 
 had to be complied with, and certain maps and plans to be de- 
 posited at the ofiices of the Board of Trade, by midnight at a given 
 date. These maps and plans were lithographed ; and lithographic 
 draughtsmen — nay, any ticket-writer who could make a mark on 
 stone or tracing-paper — were at a premium. John Clere went in 
 with the rest to a great lithographer in the Citj-, about a fortnight 
 before the great day. He had been dropping prospectuses down 
 areas at a penny a-piece — everybody, the lame, the halt, and the 
 blind, found employment in connection with railways in the 
 famous " forty-five : " beggars were directors, and alms-men
 
 284 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 members of provisional committees — when a youthful acquaint- 
 ance, engaged in the same pursuit, told him of the great run on 
 lithographic draughtsmen. He remembered that he had once 
 made a chalk di-awing or two on stone of a popular churchwarden 
 and a new pump, for a printer in Norwich, who had paid the 
 clever charity boy a few shillings for his pains. He went with 
 specimens of his proficiency, and a neatly-written character from 
 the master of St. Wackleburga ; who, good pedagogue, always 
 predicted that John Clere would become either president of the 
 Eoyal Academy, or coach-painter in ordinary to her IMajesty. 
 The great lithographer cared nothing at all about his character, 
 and very little about his specimens. He wanted hands. He gave 
 everybody a chance who said that he understood map-drawing. 
 If the neophyte made blots, and showed manifest incapability, he 
 was forthwith turned out. If he was up to his work, he was paid 
 five shillings an hour for it, and might go on drawing maps and 
 plans all day and all night. John Clere had a lithographic pen 
 put in his hand, a stone before him, and a map to copy from. He 
 proved neat and expeditious ; and before a week was out his hire 
 was raised to ten — to fifteen shillings an hour, to say nothing ot 
 refreshments laid on gratis and supplied at discretion. He made 
 junctions between Stoke Pogis and AYalton-on-the-Naze, with a 
 branch to Stony Stratford, calling at Ashton-under-Lyne. He 
 drew sections of the great Saddleback tunnel, and the great Lough 
 Swilly bridge, and the great Ben Nevis viaduct. Ah, if those 
 halcyon days could have lasted for ever ! They did not. The fixed 
 day for delivery arrived. Cabs tore up to the Board of Trade, dis- 
 gorging frantic engineers and foaming agents laden with bolsters, 
 with bales, with pillows of maps and plans. I suppose that not 
 one-hundredth of those projected railways were ever completed, 
 ever commenced indeed. However, John Clere found himself the 
 better by fifty pounds in hard cash when that memorable midniglit 
 hour struck. He had secured, too, a friend in the lithographer, 
 who saw his talent and admired his wondrous perseverance ; but 
 alas! while the lithographer had paid his workmen on the nail, the 
 projecting companies neglected to pay the lithographer. The 
 Stoke Pogis and Walton-on-the-Naze people, the Lough Swillyites 
 and the Saddlebackians, owed him hundreds. He went bankrupt,
 
 HIJ.MBLE PIE. 285 
 
 and to the colony of Natal, whence he wrote now and then to John 
 Clere, advising him to save up money enough to emigrate to that 
 flourishing settlement. 
 
 John Clere had no luck for sis ycai's afterwards, lie lived for 
 a very long time on the fifty pounds the railway mania had brought 
 him, and then sank down into a day-to-day fight for bread-and- 
 cheese. AVhen he could earn enough to buy bread with, he spent 
 it in a subscription to a night-school in Frith-street, Soho, where 
 he could draw from the " round," or plaster casts from the an- 
 tique ; and hoped some day to be able to subscribe to another 
 school, where he could draw from the living model. He felt that 
 he had everything to learn, and so went on learning, and found 
 his account in it. I wish that Mr. Samuel Smiles could have 
 known John Clere. He would have added another chapter then 
 to his good book on Self Help. 
 
 John Clere could not paint much. He dreaded the idleness of 
 companionship, and the temptations to mooning and day-dreaming 
 of a studio. The steward was kind to him, and there being an un- 
 occupied cabin at the top of the house with, fortunately, a window 
 in it — for the majority of the chambers only enjoyed a dim illu- 
 mination from a common studio — allowed him to go up there and 
 try his hand at painting, which he did now and then, in a rough- 
 and-ready fashion, with a board propped against a locker for an 
 easel. He had a taste for mediaeval art too, and was dexterous at 
 missal painting ; but those were long before the days of illumi- 
 nating Art Union, and the missals would not bring in bread. He 
 had a mingled scorn and loathing for the picture-dealers, and so 
 did not devote himself to the production of the hasty oil-sketches 
 known as " pot-boilers," or the money-bringing daubs that turn 
 up in cheap auctions. He cultivated a few of the rougher species 
 of design, and lived by it, preferring mostly to work in the com- 
 mon reading-room below, where the poor old Dictionary-maker 
 used sometimes to watch his labours in meek admiration ; and 
 Clidger used to scowl at him because he had no grievances, and 
 Tottlepot rail at him because he did not cultivate High Art, and 
 had no sense of the Beautiful. He would have conciliated Tottle- 
 pot by listening to any amount of his poetry, which rather amused 
 him than otherwise, but for a falliug-oft" of which you are speedily
 
 286 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMOX. 
 
 to hear. So he worked and worked, and suflBeient for the day was 
 the Humble Pie thereof. He drew cheap valentines ; he touched 
 up portraits for cheap miniatures (great is photography in the land 
 now, but it was only a weak and suckling art then) ; he drew 
 cartoons on wood of landaus, and electro-plate, and artificial 
 limbs, and gentlemen measuring themselves with a view to being 
 provided by cheap tailors at their provincial residences with ex- 
 quisitely fitting habiliments — the destination of most of which 
 cartoons was the advertising columns of newspapers. And now 
 and then he had a romance to illustrate for a cheap publisher, 
 or a portrait to draw on stone, and was quite happy on about 
 fifteen shillings a week, reserving any overplus for the develop- 
 ment of a certain purpose, of which only his strong human will 
 and the Power who had given it to him knew the purport. 
 
 Pendragon had not been many days in the chambers before he 
 struck up something like a friendship witli this simple, quiet, 
 earnest young man. But for his dread of eating that Humble 
 Pie, of which the other partook every day quite contentedly, and 
 even thankfully, he would have asked him to recommend him to 
 any employment he knew of; but he refrained ; and John Clere, 
 who had a habit of minding his own business, naturally tliought 
 that the parson had some private means, or that he would not sit 
 all day long reading books and biting his nails. Pendragon found 
 out, little by little, that Clere took an interest in Church matters, 
 and that he used to go to early service every morning to a certain 
 celebrated and much-decorated church in Wells Street, Oxford 
 Street, and on Sundays to a fane even more highly decorated at 
 Kn ghtsbridge. He began to liesitate whether it were not incum- 
 bent upon him — who had sacrificed so much for conscience' sake — 
 who had given up his curacy at Swordsley because he differed from 
 the rector as to red crosses, and surplices, and brass work, and 
 artificial flowers, and candlesticks — to hate this poor toiling young 
 artist because he was a Puseyite, and confessed that he read Alban 
 Butler's Lives of the Saints. But was he a Puseyite ? Somehow 
 Ruthyn had to own to himself that John Clere did not talk as the 
 Eeverend Ernest Goldthorpe talked ; that he showed much more 
 l^nowledge and much more liberality than the aristocratic rector, 
 that he seemed to have made a deep and earnest study of things
 
 HUMBLE PIE. 287 
 
 which Ernest Goldthorpe — so his ex-curate thought — had onlv 
 adopted as a fashion and a whim. " This Puaeyism, or whatever 
 it is," said Pendragon, " has made yonder raagnifico at Swordslev 
 supercilious ; it lias made Magdalen Hill proud and disdainful : 
 but it seems to have instilled into this young man only a profound 
 humility, and a desire to go on learning good things." It was 
 easy to see that John Clere was no bigot. If he leant even 
 Eomewards, and on this Pendragon pressed him hard, but un- 
 availingly, it was with no supine reliance. If he turned away from 
 cant, and howling Boanergism, and the puling shabby piety whicli 
 prompts some people, with no fear of the Mendicity Society before 
 their eyes, to be perpetually scrawling begging-letters to Heaven : 
 not honest prayers, but selfish petitions based on good deeds thev 
 affect to have done but never have — it was without intolerance and 
 without severity. John Clere belonged to a little knot of tlieo- 
 logians who lived quietly and contentedly at the chambers, and 
 who, when Pendragon bad been admitted to their intimacy, and 
 had made up his mind not to hate the artist for his Puseyism, he 
 discovered could agree excellently well among themselves. There 
 was one of the hardest of Scotchmen, who had something to do 
 with a Manchester warehouse, and who held by Crown-Court 
 prophecy and Doctor Gumming. There was a mild old man in a 
 large black stock and a larger black wig, and who, in-doors and 
 out-of-doors, wore a blue cloak with a fur collar ; who sat under a 
 famous preacher, then wont to hold forth at a chapel in Oxendon 
 Street, Haymarket. He was slightly afraid, the mild old gentle- 
 man in the stock and wig used to remark, that the Doctor had 
 Socinian tendencies ; but he could not help admiring his eloquence, 
 and revering liis truly practical piety. There was a Unitarian, 
 who attended a place of worship where Q-ray's Elegy or Camp- 
 bell's Last Man were occasionally sung by way of hymns, and 
 whom Pendragon at first regarded with the kind of feeling with 
 which Torquemada might have regarded a lapsed heretic, but who 
 was nevertheless a very quiet, honest. God-fearing man, of grave 
 conversation and blameless life. Tliere was a Welsh Baptist, who 
 had been an usher in a school ; and a Methodist mechanic from 
 Lancashire. And these five, and John Clere the Puseyite, and 
 Euthyn Pendragon, who had sacrificed so much for conscience'
 
 288 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 sake, would sit and talk together seriously on new connections 
 and old connections, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy — arguing 
 closely and sternly too, but never quarrelling. Only one trifling 
 squall troubled the tranquil sea of their daily discourse. There 
 came a Calvinist, a town traveller, I think, for a firework manu- 
 facturer. He was well read, and a fluent speaker, and at first was 
 a welcome addition to the little knot of those whom the censorious 
 Clidger used to stigmatise as " the Hypocrites," and the satirical 
 Tottlepot deride as " the Saints." But there was no eliminating 
 the brimstone and saltpetre from the Calvinist. He would persist 
 in maintaining that only the elect could be saved : that he was one 
 of the elect, and that his companions were not. This was personal, 
 and the quiet theologians of the chambers declined to argue further 
 with him ; and the Calvinist went away in dudgeon, to travel for 
 fireworks among a people who had more grace. 
 
 How happily Euthyn Pendragon thought the days would pass 
 if he could continue to dwell among these tranquil and charitably 
 minded men. But, alack, the silver sands of his purse were fast 
 running out. He had now only a few shillings left, and the 
 dreadful alternative of Humble Pie or Starvation stared him in 
 the face.
 
 CHAPTEE XXII. 
 woman's Tvonk. 
 
 Onyx Square, Tyburuia, was itself again. The auriferous tide 
 bad once more its ebb and flow between Beryl Court and the 
 mansion of Mammon ; and splendour, if not gaiety, resumed its 
 reign in the domains of Sir Jasper Goldthorpe. 
 
 The Baronet had come home for the London season, Lady 
 Ooldthorpe with him ; and Miss Magdalen Hill had come up from 
 The Casements to join her adopted motlier. Sir Jasper's health, 
 said Dr. Sardonix, was entirely restored. It was a mercy — it was 
 a blessing, quoth Dr. Sardonix. If it were not impertinent to 
 say, neatly observed the Physician, that one to whom Society 
 owed so much owed something likewise to Society, he, the Doctor, 
 could state, that his distinguished patient was perfectly prepared 
 to discharge that debt. His place had long been vacant, but he 
 was now ready to fill it again, and would do so, as worthily as 
 ever. 
 
 This was very neat language, and from a courtlv doctor who had 
 numbers of distinguished patients to conciliate, came very appro- 
 priately ; but it was not the less a lie. Perhaps Society could not 
 get on without such elegant untruths : at any rate, they are told 
 every day of Society's life, and, in Society, prosper exceedingly. 
 " There is not the slightest foundation," says the Morning 
 Bmootlier, " for the absurd statement to which an unscrupulous 
 contemporary just gave currency, that the pecuniary embarrass- 
 ments of a certain gallant officer in the Household Brigade have 
 led to his quitting the country in a precipitate manner." It is 
 perfectly well known at all Captain De Loos' clubs, that he has 
 been cheating at cards, that the usurers refuse to renew any more 
 of the Captain's bills, and, tired of large interests, uproariously 
 demand their principal in full. The Captain is rusticating at 
 
 u
 
 290 THE SEVEN' SOXS OP MAMJION. 
 
 Kissingen, whence lie will speedily remove to some northern 
 clime, where extradition treaties with England. are not known; 
 for, lo, in a scandalous trial in the Common Pleas steps into the 
 witness-box De Loos' great chum, Viscount Groomporter, and 
 maketh oath and sweareth that the signatures to half-a-dozen bills 
 of exchange, which the Captain has been getting discounted as 
 accepted by his lordship, are none of his handwriting. Not a 
 word of truth, I can assure you, in the story about the fracas 
 between Lord Eaffborough and his wife, Tom Soapley — that 
 eminent professor of the art of making things comfortable — is 
 instructed to say to anybody who will believe him. But nobody 
 will believe him, for the reason that it is perfectly well known 
 that Lord Eaffborough has broken Lady Eaffborough's caclie- 
 peigne, and very nearly her head into the bargain, with a cham- 
 pagne-bottle, and that her Ladyship has run away with Signer 
 Mercandotti, the music-master. 
 
 Nobody who heard Dr. Sardonix believed a word that he said 
 about Sir Jasper Goldthorpe's complete restoration to health. 
 Everybody could see that Mammon looked exceedingly ill and 
 exceedingly shaky. Indeed, some went so far as to say that the 
 Baronet's lengthened tour on the Continent was all a pretence, 
 and that he had been sojourning in a private lunatic asylum. 
 Still it was a kind and charitable thing for Dr. Sardonix to trot 
 about town reporting his entire convalescence ; and Society, to 
 say nothing of Mammon, was very grateful to him for it. "When 
 Madame de Genlis's Palace of Truth is built, the window-blind 
 makers will all realise rapid fortunes. 
 
 However, Dr. Sardonix's amiable fictions notwithstanding, 
 there was no denying that pomp and luxury had reasserted them- 
 selves in Onyx Square. If the dead man, and the awful circum- 
 stances of his death, were not, and could never be, forgotten, his 
 remains, at least, were interred in a pompous catafalque, and he 
 was mourned for beneath veils of gold-and-silver tissue. His 
 mother still wore mourning for him ; still shed tears when, 
 routing among the drawers of her dressing-table, or in some of 
 her woman's hiding-places, — and what woman has not a hiding- 
 place?— she came upon some boyish memento of him who was 
 gone, never to return : — now a glove, now the agate-mounted whip
 
 woman's avork. 291 
 
 he had with his first pony, now a school theme, beautifully 
 engrossed over faintly-ruled lines, and elaborately flourished with 
 swans and cherubiins by the writing-master attached to the well- 
 known classical establishment of Dr. Budds, Broomley Heath, 
 Birchshire. These and dozens of other things— his epaulette-boi, 
 the cashmere shawl and ivory chessmen he had sent her from 
 India, a rough pen-and-ink drawing he had made of himself in 
 cantonments, in white jacket and pith hat, lounging in a rockinf^ 
 chair, smoking a monstrous Trichinopoly cheroot, with a glass of 
 brandy pawnee beside him, — all these were so many mute but 
 eloquent disclaimers of the possibility of his ever quite fadin"- 
 away from the memory of his parents. We can't get rid of 
 these awfully silent legacies of the dead, these whispers from 
 beyond the grave. Poor Lady Groldtliorpe did not lose the 
 memory of her sorrow, but she ceased to dwell upon it : she only 
 bethought herself of it with a chastened sadness : the image of the 
 lost son was as that of a country visited long, long ago, of which 
 only the dim outline is permanent in the mind, but which now 
 and again, and in a transient manner, starts up distinct and vivid. 
 Moreover she was a cheerful woman by nature, and her suscepti- 
 bilities were not of the keenest. Heartily grieve as she mi-'ht. 
 sorrow seldom spoilt her appetite : she might cry over her dinner, 
 but she was rarely so wretched as to go utterly dinnerless. New 
 cares, new pre-occupations, conspired, however, about this time to 
 cast a shade over Lady Goldthorpe's generally beaming tempera- 
 ment. The chief care was her husband's infirm state of health, 
 coupled with an uneasy sensation that he was brooding over some 
 deep and secret sorrow, to which the loss of his son was com- 
 paratively trifling. What it was she did not know ; but that 
 there was something lying dark in his path — something evil 
 lowering over his head — her womanly instinct persuaded her. 
 
 "My Goldy usen't to take on so," she would remark to the 
 confidential Cashman. " He's had troubles enough in his time, 
 poor dear ; but he always got over them, and was as merry as a 
 grig a fortnight afterwards. He's had losses and people to worrit 
 him ; but he never seemed so down as he is now. Depend upon 
 it, Cash," — Lady Goldthorpe had a pleasant liking for abbre- 
 viation, — " there's more in it than either of us think for. What 
 
 u 2
 
 292 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 vexes me most is, that lie never tells me anything. He used to 
 tell me everything ; and now he has scarcely a word to throw at 
 a dog." 
 
 In Mrs. Cashraan's mind there was one prime and fundamental 
 root for all human evil. It was not money which Mrs. Cashman, 
 who had saved a comfortable little loecidium of her own, so 
 stanchly held to be the root of all good. The fons et origo of 
 all misery and disaster had in her philosophy an intimate and 
 inseparable connection with the human abdomen and the human 
 liver. She considered the two cs identical, and seldom mentioned 
 one without the other. 
 
 " P'raps it's the stommick, my lady," she suggested. " P'raps 
 it's the boil " (Mrs. Cashman always called the biliary secretion 
 the " boil ") " that's the matter with the poor dear gentleman." 
 
 " Cashman," replied her mistress, with decision, but without 
 acrimony, " you're a fool. Sir Jasper never had anything the 
 matter with his liver. Bless his heart, he could digest a saddle 
 and bridle for breakfast, and a copper stewpan for dinner. Ko, 
 Cash ; there's something else. It's something in the City that 
 troubles my " 
 
 " The fun's, my Lady, maybe," meekly hinted the rebuked 
 housekeeper. 
 
 " Ay, the Funds, or the ]N^ational Debt, or the Bank Stocks, 
 or the what's-his-nanies," pursued Lady Goldthorpe, snappishly. 
 " Drat the City ; I wish there had never been such a place as the 
 City, I do declare, though we were as poor as church-mice before 
 we went there, and got all our money out of it. The City ! 
 bother the City ; it's the bane of every woman's life. If your 
 husband comes home as cross as two sticks, and as surly as a bear 
 with a sore head, things are sure to have been going contrariwise 
 in the City. If you wish him to take you to Greenwich or 
 liichmond, he's got an appointment in the City. If he comes 
 home at two in the morning, with one collar up and the other 
 down, and a lighted cigar-end in his waistcoat-pocket, he's been 
 meeting a friend in the City. If you want the horses, he's going 
 to take them into the City. It's all City, City, City, though it's 
 made us as rich as Water Creases" (presumably Croesus) ; " and 
 I wish the City was at Jericho, tliat I'm sure I do."
 
 woman's wor.K. 293 
 
 I wonder how many ladies of my acquaintance are of the same 
 opinion with Lady Goldthorpe, — albeit they may express their 
 thoughts in language slightly more refined. 
 
 These were the cares of the Avife of Mammon. Her preoccu- 
 pations were to find a wife for her son Ernest, and a husband for 
 her adopted child Magdalen Hill. 
 
 " I don't see why they shouldn't come together now poor dear 
 Hugh's gone," she reasoned to herself. " Her fortun' would 
 join very nicely with Ernest ; they're both clever, and pious, and 
 charitable, and they'd make a very pretty pair. Ah, but would 
 they ? AYould they agree, I wonder ? He's proud, and she's 
 proud. He's got a will of his own, and so has she ; and when 
 pride and pride come together. Old Scratch comes and sits 
 bodkin."- — -You must really excuse Lady Groldthorpe's want of 
 refinement, but you must remember that she was of humble 
 extraction, and had once been the wife of a small shopkeeper. — 
 " No, I'm afraid the match wouldn't do. As for Ernest, I must 
 and will marry him off before he's a year older ; but Magdalen — 
 I don't think she would have anybody, if he was Emperor of 
 Japan, and had a mint of money : 'I wear the weeds of a virgin 
 widow,' she told me yesterday. Stufi:' and nonsense. Girls ought 
 to be married, particular when they have plenty of money. I 
 hadn't any money when Goldy married me. I had but two 
 frocks, — a brown merino, and a silver-gray lustriug for Sundays, — 
 and I was as happy as the day was long. But Maggy loved 
 Hugh too dearly to be false to his memory ; so she said. Ah, 
 Hugh, Hugh ! poor dear Hugh ! We shall meet in Heaven, 
 where the wicked cease from worritin', and there's no more 
 bother, and the weary are nice and comfortable." 
 
 This was the usual burden of the good woman's complaints, 
 and although she misquoted the sacred text, she thoroughly 
 believed in it. 
 
 There were more persons in Onyx House besides Lady Gold- 
 thorpe and the confidential Cashman who shrugged surmises and 
 whispered misgivings about Sir Jasper's altei'ed manner, his 
 bowed and drooping head, his anxious face. His footmen noticed 
 it ; but as it did not affect their wages, their uniform, or their 
 hair-powder, they did not trouble their inetfabilities about it,
 
 294 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 much. Argen}-, Sir Jasper's body-servant, remarked it. Argent 
 was a shrewd man, and ventured to sound Mr. Drossleigh, the 
 financial factotum, who still came backwards and forwards between 
 Onyx Square and Beryl Court, Sir Jasper's ill-health frequently 
 compelling him to absent himself for days together from business. 
 Argent did this with great fear and trembling ; but Mr. Dross- 
 leigh did not, as he expected, reprove him with any extraordinary 
 sternness. 
 
 " It's no business of yours, and none of mine. Argent, for the 
 matter of that," he remarked, "and it would be worth both our 
 situations if Sir Jasper found us out prying into his affairs ; but 
 between you and me, his goings-on puzzle me quite as much as 
 they do you. I suppose we botli see about as much of him, 
 you in your way, and I in mine. I can't understand what's up, 
 Argent. There's something in the wind, and that's the truth. I 
 do hope that Sir Jasper hasn't got into any trouble about a bit of 
 white muslin." 
 
 Eor, as tlie peculiar idiosyncrasy of the confidential Cashman was 
 to imagine that there could be no trouble without a derangement 
 of the stomach and liver, so did the confidential Drossleigh attri- 
 bute every moral and physical ailment to one source — namely, to 
 white muslin; otherwise, the womankind enveloped therein. Mr. 
 Drossleigh was a confirmed misogynist, and those familiar with 
 his personal history afiirmed that in early life he had been the 
 victim of a subtle adventuress, habitually wearing white muslin, 
 who, having decoyed him into presenting her with his portrait* 
 and addressing to her some absurd versicles, in which "utter" 
 rhymed with "butter," and "pledge" with "edge," had, on his 
 declining to purchase a special licence, and make a handsome 
 settlement upon her forthwith, brought an action for breach of 
 promise of marriage against him, and recovered damages to the 
 extent of three hundred and fifty pounds. Drossleigh paid the 
 damages and costs, and thenceforth looked with an evil eye on 
 white muslin, constantly traducing the wearers of that textile 
 fabric, and ascribing to their agency all woe that is worked 
 beneath the sun. Nor did Sir Jasper Groldthorpe's condition 
 escape the notice and the comments of two young ladies at that 
 time resident in his mansion. Magdalen Hill saw his sorrow, and
 
 uoiiAN s vroiiK. S95 
 
 grieved, Letitia Salusbury saw Magdalen's grief in a stronger 
 light than even she did Sir Jasper's, and sympathised -witli her to 
 tlie full. They were not a very well assorted pair. Magdalen 
 was as little communicative as ever ; and her frank and voluble 
 companion was compelled to judge mostly by inference of that 
 which was passing in the mind of her taciturn companion. 
 
 I have said that they were ill-assorted. Seldom, perhaps, were 
 two young ladies brought together who had so few tastes in 
 common, or who seemed so widely to diverge in their views and 
 dispositions. Magdalen grew sterner and more ascetic, so to 
 speak, every day. In a few cold words she told her friend that 
 she, Magdalen, had long neglected her duties ; that she had long 
 been blind to her responsibilities ; but that her eyes were at 
 length opened, and that she was determined to discharge the task 
 which she knew devolved upon her, and to which she felt that she 
 was called, 
 
 "What is the task, Meg?" — Miss Salusbury persisted in 
 addressing Miss Hill in the least refined diminutives. — " What 
 ia the duty ? What are the responsibilities ? Have you got any 
 bills to take up, like the young men in the Heavies whom one 
 knew at Swordsley ? Are you obliged to get up early in the 
 morning for drill, or stable-duty ? Do you want to go to matins 
 at St. Barnabas, or, better still, at the Oratory at Brompton ? 
 Or do you feel it your solemn vocation to wear a horse-hair next 
 your skin, and whip yourself three times a day, like St. Catha- 
 rine of Sienna, or the saints and martyrs you are always 
 painting? " 
 
 Ah, those saints and martyrs ! — 'tis the writer who puts in the 
 interlocutory. How we have degenerated from the fine old times 
 ■of maceration and mortification ! The saintesses of old wore horse- 
 hair chemisettes : our modern devotees only wear them in tlie form 
 of crinoline skirts. The primitive pietists scourged themselves 
 with wire : the saints of Belgravia make the wire into " cases," to 
 distend their skirts withal. 
 
 " I think," Miss Hill calmly answered, " that I have painted 
 saints and martyrs enough. I hope to look henceforth at those 
 holy exemplars from quite a difierent point of view. I have done 
 with those vanities of gold and vellum and gaudiness."
 
 290 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 "Ah, I thought what it was coming to. I guessed what was 
 going to happen. A narrow cell, a hard pallet, a crucifix, a rosary, 
 a skull, a big hook, and a pair of shears for your back hair ; — ali 
 is vanity, that's it. Tou are going to take the veil." 
 
 " I have no such intentions. Although the communion by 
 which I hold recognises, under certain circumstances, the excel- 
 lence and usefulness of the monastic system ; although conventual 
 institutions, properly modified, are not wholly foreign to my views 
 on Church matters, — I look at utter seclusion from the world, and 
 denial of the claims which the world has upon our services, as 
 selfish and hypocritical. When I feel that I can no longer do 
 good, I may think again of becoming a nun." 
 
 "I dare say you've thought of it over and over again; as it is, 
 you're a walking Lady Abbess. I'm half afraid that you'll order 
 me to be bricked up for my sins in the wall of Tattersall's yard. 
 Charmingly edifying it would be ; just like Constance de Beverley 
 in Marmion. Fancy the skeleton of Lord Chalkstonehengist's 
 daughter being discovered fifty years hence standing bolt upright 
 in a niche made in the bricks and mortar : nothing on her but 
 some mouldy grave-clothes, nothing beside her but an empty 
 pitcher." 
 
 " You jest upon everything, Letitia." 
 
 " I jest upon monks and nuns, because I believe the vast 
 majority of the tales told about them to be silly trash. Do you 
 think I believe all those oldwomen's fiibles about dungeons, and 
 living sepulchres, and iron rods, and clanking chains, and the like? 
 Constance de Beverley's niche was in all probability a rabbit- 
 hutch. I've no patience with your monks and your nuns, and the 
 stupid girls who allow artful priests to caricature nowadays horrors 
 that never existed. Convents in England are not, and never will 
 be any more than a caricature. Abroad you have the genuine 
 article, — and what is it ? Do you think it's all midnight chanting 
 and mortifying of the flesh ? I knew a girl at school in Paris who 
 had been brought up at the Sacre Cceur. She said that the young 
 nuns did nothing out of class-hours but talk scandal and abuse 
 the abbess, and that the old ones were always taking snuff" and 
 quarrelling as to who made the best preserves and the nicest 
 cherry-brandy. I believe they're all the same, monks, and that
 
 wojian's work. 297 
 
 they'd all be much better if they could go across country a bit, 
 and back a horse now and then for a trifle." 
 
 " And the Sisters of Charitv ?" 
 
 " Well, they're bricks ; that I'll admit. When we were staying 
 at Brussels, there were some good girls, called Feiites Smirs des 
 Pauvres, who not only nursed the poor, but went out begging for 
 them. Only imagine a young lady by birth and education going 
 out every morning in a donkey-cart full of tin-cans, and begging 
 broken meat and tea-leaves from hotel to hotel. There's no kiss- 
 ing the pavement, no thrashing oneself, and no midnight chanting 
 among the Sisters of Charity or the Petites Soeurs, you may be 
 sure ; and I don't see why there should be any among the nuns, 
 or the monks either." 
 
 So the Honourable Letitia Salusbury said, thinking herself 
 exceedingly wise in her generation. She had been to Brussels. 
 She may have visited Louvain. I wonder whether she had ever 
 heard of a certain Monastery of the Eathers of Good Works, at 
 a place called Hoogeudracht ? 
 
 Miss Salusbury, however, outspoken as she was, by no means 
 regarded Magdalen's expression of opinion as to the laxity with 
 which her duties liad hitherto been performed with anything ap- 
 proaching aversion or contempt. She respected her friend. She 
 "was glad to recognise in her superior qualities of mind, and a 
 stronger sense of rectitude. It might not be within poor Letitia's 
 power to understand the purport of Magdalen's mission ; but she 
 could admire her for the inflexible manner in which she began to 
 carry it out. 
 
 If the heiress had consulted her own tastes, and had been selflfeh 
 enough to have her own way now that she had come to be the 
 guest of the Mammon family in Onyx Square, she would have 
 employed her time in a very difl'ereut manner to that which made 
 the programme traced out for Miss Hill. For operas, or balls, or 
 concerts, Miss Salusbury did not much carej but she was very 
 fond of the theatre ; she was fonder of the park ; she deliglited in 
 what she called "jollifications," whether those jollifications took 
 place at flower-shows, at public breakfasts, or at pic-nics. Mun- 
 dane entertainments of that description did not enter into the 
 social scheme of Miss Magdalen Hill. She did not insist upon
 
 298 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Letitia's accompanying her in her daily pilgrimage, but she looked 
 sadder and graver than her wont when the other manifested a 
 disinclination to join her ; and so, with a good-humoured protest 
 against the whole thing being immensely slow and a great— I am 
 afraid she said a confounded — bore, she went willingly whithersoever 
 she was led. As to Lady Goldthorpe, she declared point blank 
 that she couldn't be bothered with Magdalen's whims and fancies, 
 and that she would be glad enough to give any money to the little 
 beggars and the destitute crossing-sweepers, but would prefer not 
 to cultivate their personal acquaintance. " Go along with the 
 likes of such ragamuffins." Such was Lady Goldthorpe's more 
 expressive locution. 
 
 Magdalen and Letitia did however " go along," and mingle with 
 not only the likes of the classes just alluded to, but among men, 
 women, and children of even lower degrees. Each morning was 
 devoted to the exploration of the wretchedest — often of the most 
 depraved — haunts of London. They entered hovels, and passed 
 through scenes, and conversed with and succoured miserable 
 beings, such as even the clergyman, the city missionary, and the 
 police-officer seldom saw — such as the sunlight seldom glanced 
 upon. Their reception was various. Sometimes the inquiries they 
 made were received with respect : the relief they gave, with 
 gratitude. Sometimes, but not seldom, they were met by 
 sullen denials, by hypocritical lies, by rudeness, and abuse. But 
 Magdalen went on her way, and the more rebufts she met with 
 seemed the more determined not to swerve from her appointed 
 path. 
 
 It was not all black and dismal, however ; now and then they 
 visited some place where there was brightness, and cheerfulness, and 
 hope. Now it was a training school, a ragged school, a school of 
 industry, or cookery, or housekeeping ; now the workroom of some 
 associated seamstresses ; now a new and improved habitation for 
 the poor. 
 
 " There is a place," Magdalen Hill said one morning, " which I 
 
 have never visited, and about which " (she mentioned some 
 
 philanthropic bishop or nobleman's name) " has often talked to 
 me. It is a kind of model lodging-house, — not exactly for the 
 poor, but persons of the male sex very reduced in circumstances,
 
 WOMAN S WORK. 299 
 
 or struggling hard against adversity. Shall we go there, 
 Letitia?" 
 
 " Anywhere," answered Miss Salusbury blitliely ; '•' anything 
 for a change after the sweeps and the beggars. "What's the place 
 called, Maggy ? " 
 
 " It is called," Miss Hill answered, referring to her list for the 
 day, " the Monmouth Chambers, and is situated somewhere in 
 Soho : we will drive there at once."
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 
 A MAX W£AEI>'G HIS HEART UPON HIS SLEEYE. 
 
 "Who but the genial Frencliman? AVho but he? Who but 
 jovial, careless, candid, confiding, simple-minded, good-hearted 
 Simon Lefranc ? 
 
 He wore his heart upon his sleeve. It was not a handsome 
 sleeve. Indeed, it was somewhat white at the seams, greasy at 
 the elbows, and frayed as to the cuffs and button-holes. Nor was 
 the sleeve beneath it distinguished for whiteness of hue or fineness 
 of texture. But upon this sleeve Simon Lefranc wore his heart ; 
 and I should like to know whether that fact did not at once con- 
 vert a well-worn, and, to tell truth, somewhat shabby sleeve into 
 one of purple velvet, embroidered with gold and seed-pearls. 
 
 He had no secrets from anybody. He was as open as the day 
 or the Liverpool Free Library. He abhorred disguises. He 
 execrated concealment. He told his simple life-story to all who 
 chose to listen, and expected, although he did not exact, an equal 
 amount of confidence in return. " Bacontez moi voire histoire " 
 — " jS'arrate to me the events of your life," he would say to chance 
 companions in railways, in steamboats, on the knife-boards of 
 omnibuses, even. Simon was not precisely a fascinating man, yet 
 there was something irresistibly winning in his speech and man- 
 ner. His persuasive volubility was marvellous. He would have 
 made a fortune as a quack-doctor, a cheap-jack, a popular preacher, 
 a secretary to a charity, or a travelling lecturer on life-assurance. 
 People did tell him their histories. Old gentlemen, almost entirely 
 strangers to him, had revealed to him the investments in which 
 their wealth was placed. Landlords of hotels where he stopped 
 had consulted him as to the proper mode of carrying on business. 
 He was a man who on first acquaintance would be permitted by 
 women to hold their babies, and to whom, on a second interview.
 
 A MAN WEARING HIS HEART UPON HIS SLEEVE. 301 
 
 would be imparted the details of domestic cares and troubles cou- 
 nected with tallymen, evil-speaking neighbours, and husbands who 
 stopped out late. He knew what Mrs. Timms had said (malevo- 
 lently and abusively) of Mrs. Pimms. People showed him letters, 
 and asked his advice. He had been known to knock at the door 
 of a strange house in quest of lodgings, to take tea the same 
 evening with the landlady', to be hand and glove ^vith all the neigh- 
 bours in a week, and to stand godfather to one of their children 
 within a mouth. 
 
 These people, who hammer out acquaintances as quickly and 
 dexterously as a smith hammers out horseshoes, are a wonder and 
 a terror to me. I, the narrator, live at some distance from Baby- 
 lon the bricky, and travel up and down by rail every day. I have 
 the same travelling companions — ladies, gentlemen, and children 
 — day after day for months. "We never interchange a word — 
 scarcely so much as a grunt on the question of a window open or 
 shut — scarcely so much as a surly bow as acknowledgment of the 
 courtesy of passing a ticket to the collector. I scowl at them, and 
 they scowl at me. The other morning there travelled with us, a 
 lithe, ready-tongued man, wearing of course his heart upon his 
 sleeve. He was a perfect stranger to us all ; but we had not gone 
 five miles before he had told a particularly surly and speechless 
 neighbour of mine how many years be had been connected with 
 the cork-cutting trade, how many shares he owned in the Imperial 
 Gas Company, and how many acres of potatoes he had lately lost 
 through blight. As I stepped on to the platform at the London 
 terminus, my surly and speechless neighbour was explaining to 
 the heart-upon-his-sleeve-wearing man his views on the Treaty of 
 ■Commerce, and I should not have been at all surprised to see them 
 walk away together arm-in-arm. Once, many years ago, it oc- 
 ■curred to me to court a widow. She wouldn't have me, — an error 
 in taste and judgment very prevalent at that time among the 
 softer sex. As stupid men will do, I introduced a friend to her, 
 with a vague idea that he would plead my cause or help my suit 
 somehow. He was no traitor, and didn't carry off the widow 
 himself, as Daly, in Gilbert Guniei/, abducted the heiress ; but I 
 declare that when, a montli after his introduction to her, the 
 preposterous female I courted accepted the hand of some man
 
 303 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 who had made a fortune out of melting tallow in Australia — I 
 forgive him now, for she led him, ha ! ha ! such a deuce of a — but 
 no matter — my friend was one of the trustees under the marriage 
 settlement ; and five weeks before she hadn't known him from 
 Adam. 
 
 Such an adept at impromptu acquaintances and improvised 
 friendships was Simon Lefranc. By profession he was a com- 
 mercial traveller ; and his line of business was — well, ladies, there 
 is nothing to blush at — Parisian corsets. Tou may call them 
 articles de Paris, if you please ; but Simon Lefranc was neverthe- 
 less a bagman to a large foreign house in the stay-making branch 
 of commerce. For there is a very large ready-made trade in 
 boddices ; and perhaps not a tithe of the ladies who are measured 
 for those adjuncts to female elegance so much decried by doctors 
 really have them made to order. 
 
 With his easy, fluent, jovial manner, his perfect knowledge of 
 the world and of business, his equal command of the Trench and 
 English languages, Simon Lefranc should properly, it might be 
 imagined, have been able to live in luxury, or at least in ease. But 
 he had been overtaken by misfortune. He told you so with 
 charming frankness. His little savings had been swallowed up in 
 a disastrous speculation. A friend for whom he had pledged his 
 credit had used him with the grossest ingratitude. He had 
 sacrificed all to meet the calls of duty and integrity. It was 
 necessary that he should work hard for the benefit of one near and 
 dear to him — his little Adele, in good sooth — in France, his 
 smiling native land. Meanwhile he must retrench, he must pinch 
 himself, he must practise the strictest economy ; and so he became 
 a temporary inmate of the Monmouth Chambers, Soho, and 
 cheerfully nibbled at his self-imposed Humble Pie, in company 
 with Tottlepot the poet, and the starving Marquis de la Vieille 
 Eoche, and the all but penniless Euthyn Pendragon, ex-curate of 
 Swordsley. Did not such abnegation of self do honour to the 
 heart which Simon Lefranc wore upon his sleeve ? 
 
 There were no other commercial travellers at the Chambers. The 
 convivial gentlemen who draw a guinea a day for their expenses, 
 and always drink a pint of wine at dinner, would have disdained 
 that humble caravanserai. Simon Lefranc did not always sleep
 
 A MAN WEARING HIS HEART UPON HIS SLEEVE. 303 
 
 at tlie Chambers. A fellow countryman who had a little villa 
 at Tottenham — he pronounced the word very sjUabically — was 
 kind enough, two or three nights a week, to heherger him, to give 
 him a bed. Simon Lefranc gave the history of his friend at 
 Tot-ten-ham with pleasing minuteness. John Clere, the painter, 
 could have drawn from the description he gave a portrait of 
 M. Griboulard, retired basket-maker, of the three Angola cats he 
 kept, of the French Protestant pastor, jM. Chauoinefc, vrho visited 
 him. For Simon Lefranc was of the Huguenot faith, and owed 
 much of his popularity among his friends and customers to his 
 dissent from the errors of Eome. 
 
 Stout, well-built, about fifty years of age, gray hair closely 
 cropped, an excellent set of teeth, a bright eye, a full lip, an 
 active forefinger, with which he was always tapping people's 
 waistcoats, a merry manner of snufF-taking, of kerchief waving, 
 of pirouetting on the points of his toes, of humming little airs 
 from popular vaudevilles, a never-failing willingness to oblige, 
 to do little services : put these together, and you have the out- 
 ward and visible presentment of Simon Lefranc. Stay ; I have 
 omitted to mention his heart, which he wore — not ostentatiously, 
 but plain as a pikestaff in the eyes of most men and all women — 
 on his sleeve. 
 
 It was a bright, warm, cheery morning, and Simon Lefranc 
 came into the cofiee-room, blithely murmuring one of his little 
 vaudeville couplets. " AVith a tra la la, with a tra la la," the 
 mercurial Prenchmau sang. He brought his modest breakfast 
 with him. He had just prepared it, singing all the while, below. 
 A cup of coffee, skilfully prepared in his own percolator, a little 
 loaf purchased from a neighbouring French baker, a tiny pat of 
 butter, — these formed his simple meal. He could not afford 
 luxuries, he said, either in food or in apparel. To tell the truth, 
 Simon was wofully shabby, and his coat was in such evil cjise as 
 to inspire a surmise that some day or other he would have to pin 
 his heart to one of the flexors or extensors of his arm, for want of 
 a sleeve to wear it upon. 
 
 " I could carry the purple and the fine linen," he would say ; 
 " I could eat of the trufHe and the ortolan ; I could drink of the 
 crus of the Clos Vougeot ; but why should I consume the pro-
 
 304 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 pertj of others ? "Why sliould I eat and drink away the dowry 
 of my Adele ? Va ! ma petite. Tit, niras pas sans dotT And 
 a tear would stand in Simon Lefranc's bright eye. 
 
 "And my Tottlepot, my poet," the lively traveller exclaimed, 
 sitting down to his meal ; " how is my possessor of the j^i* sacre ? 
 Ah, if I could hut write poetry! Ah, if I had \X\q feu sacre I 
 Still at work, my Tottlepot. Voyons ! a new stanza ? " 
 
 His hand was cheerily travelling towards a little portfolio 
 which lay beside the poet. He was the kind of man who, 
 wearing his heart upon his sleeve, might have taken a letter from 
 tinder your nose, and read it from beginning to end without your 
 being offended with him. Strangely enough, Tottlepot made a 
 sudden clutch at his portfolio, — he was fond enough, in general, 
 of showing his fine bold, copperplate-like handwriting, — and red- 
 dened, and looked alarmed. 
 
 "It isn't — it isn't poetry," he stammered. " I'm not in the 
 vein this morning. I've been hard at work since six, copying 
 some business manuscripts." 
 
 Tottlepot eked out his slender livelihood by his caligraphy. 
 He had established a species of connection. And if you have 
 a connection, even in the picking-up-cigar-ends, or spent-lucifer- 
 match, or broken-egg-shell trade you may live. 
 
 " Industrious man ! How different from my desultory Bo- 
 hemian existence ! I was always volage — le vrai Parisien, enfmy 
 
 It is to be observed that Simon Lefranc spoke English with 
 perfect fluency, but with a strong foreign accent, which it would 
 be embarrassing to attempt to imitate orthographicaUy, but which 
 had more a Provengal than a Parisian tone. 
 
 *' After all, sir. Poetry " the vain Tottlepot began. 
 
 " Is divine. The poet is a man alone. He should be crowned 
 with laurels in the Capitol. Sont-ils rares, ces lawyers ; et les 
 cancres qui en sont courronnes, comme Us ahondent ! Fools are 
 smothered with what is denied to Tottlepot." 
 
 The poet blushed again. No flattery was too gross or too 
 fulsome for him. Tou could not give him too much of it. He 
 would bask and writhe himself about when flattered, liiie a dog 
 on a sunny door-mat. 
 
 "And our charming client," pursued Simon the flatterer; " we
 
 A MAX WEAllIXG HIS HEAllT UPON HIS SLEEVE. 305 
 
 are still doing business for Ler, eh ? We still copy out her 
 romances. Diantre, what a pretty little -woman our cbarmiug 
 client is ! " 
 
 " She is a lady occupying the most exalted of social positions," 
 Tottlepot rejoined, with a lofty air. " Nature, Art, and Fortune 
 have been alike prodigal in the bestowal of their gifts upon 
 her." 
 
 " And she comes all the way to Soho to have her romances 
 copied into the lelle ecritiire of Tottlepot. Does she intend to 
 publish them, these romances? "Will she be another George 
 Sand, another Madame de Girardin, another Comtesse Dash ? 
 Ov dioes, a.- tendresse bring her towards her Tottlepot?" — Simon 
 pronounced the word Tot-tle-potte. "Ah, lucky rogue, lucky 
 rogue ! You are not wholly an insulary, my friend. You have 
 some of the old Gaulish blood in you, — the spirit of the Comte 
 Oury, — the manner of the Frenchman who by nature a le don de 
 iplairer 
 
 Tottlepot was certainly a sham poet ; but his eyes began, 
 nevertheless, to roll in a fine frenzy, and his ears to tingle at 
 these intoxicating words. He could have hugged the Frenchman 
 in his rapture. As he put his breakfast things together, they 
 clattered in his nervous hands ; and he was going away delighted 
 to his cabin, which he called " the poet's studio," and where he 
 was by special favour allowed to have a little table and the fourth 
 part of a window. He was always squabbling with the steward, 
 and girding at him, it is true ; but still that functionary had the 
 respect for hia genius which simple-minded men persist in enter- 
 taining towards those who talk largely. 
 
 He was on the threshold, when the Frenchman called him 
 back. 
 
 "Fly not from Paradise, my Tottlepot," he cried ; "seek not 
 too suddenly the Parnassus of the quatrihne etage. Unless I am 
 much mistaken, I just saw your charming client pass the window, 
 'Tis a scandal that such a charming creature should be compelled 
 to walk. Why has she not carriage, horses, powdered lacqueys?" 
 
 Simon's observant eye — yes, it was as observant as it was 
 bright and roving — had not deceived him. The form of a lady 
 had flitted across the window looking into the street ; and anon
 
 30 G THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 the steward put his head in at the coffee-room door, and, in a tone 
 half surly and half deferential, announced that Mr. Tottlepot was 
 wanted. 
 
 As a rule, ladies were not encouraged at the Monmouth 
 Chambers, and those who were admitted to the precincts thereof 
 were chiefly connected with the profession of washing linen. 
 The purpose of the visit of Tottlepot's client was, however, held 
 by the steward to be suflaciently legitimate to warrant her recep- 
 tion ; and the lady herself would even condescend occasionally to 
 enter the steward's lodge, to converse with the steward's wife, 
 who pronounced her a " lady every inch of her," — and to dandle 
 the diminutive baby. She was the kindest and most urbane of 
 ladies. She made little presents to the steward and his wife. 
 She endowed the baby with a cloth robe, elaborately braided, 
 which, when put on the poor little thing, on high days and holi- 
 days, very nearly smothered it. She took an interest, she said, in 
 Tottlepot, and admired his talents. She feared that the world 
 had not used him very well, and, in the kindness of her heart, she 
 made work for him in copying manuscript. 
 
 Tottlepot went out into the entry, and found the lady there 
 waiting for him, with some impatience it would seem, for she was 
 tapping a little foot on the mat. He made her a low bow, and 
 inclined his head downwards, for Tottlepot was tall, and the lady 
 was but a slight and fragile little thing. 
 
 " Come out into the street," she said. 
 
 They went out. Tottlepot moved a little on one side, and 
 stood with his back to the coffee-room window. Had his position 
 been different, he might have seen the jovial face and bright 
 observant eye of Simon Lefranc beaming through the glass. One 
 could have seen his sleeve, too, and the heart he wore upon it. 
 
 "It is imprudent," the lady said, hurriedly, " to talk to you 
 here ; but time presses, and I have no alternative. Can you 
 write Sir Jasper Goldthorpe's name? It is the only one I cannot 
 manage. There is a tremulous curve to the G- that drives me to 
 despair." 
 
 " I have tried at least a hundred times, and have mastered it at 
 last. Old Kraussen in Lambeth could not do it better."' 
 
 " Old Kraussen was a fool to get transported just as I wanted
 
 A MAN WEAIUXG JUS HEART UPON 1113 SLEEVE. GOT 
 
 liim. He was not sucli a fool tliougli as you are, ■with your 
 poetry." 
 
 " Madam ! " — and the poet, wounded in his teuderest point, 
 drew himself up haughtily. 
 
 " There, there, remember wo are in the street. Get a little 
 closer to the wall. Inside this roll of manuscript to copy you 
 will find the paper. The name is to be across, as usual. I have 
 used the old ' made payable ' stamp — the old red ink. It must 
 be ready in an hour. Will it be ready in an hour ? " 
 
 "It will." 
 
 "You will meet me, then, on the south side of Leicester 
 Square, by the auction-rooms, at noon precisely. How much am 
 I to give you for this ? " 
 
 " The name is a difficult one — the most difficult I have ever 
 attempted. Twenty pounds." 
 
 "I will give you ten." 
 
 "Make it fifteen." 
 
 " There, poet, you shall have your fifteen, only let it be done 
 within the time." 
 
 "I will be ia Leicester Square precisely at twelve." 
 
 The lady, who was exactly and entirely Mrs. Armytage, did not 
 take the trouble of saying good-by to the poet, but placing a 
 portly roll of manuscript in his hand, nodded her ringlets iu token 
 •of farewell, and waved her hand in dismissal. Tottlepot hurried 
 into the Chambers and up-stairs to his cabin, where he at once 
 shot the door-bolt and set to work. 
 
 The lady, left alone, hesitated for a moment, as if uncertain in 
 which direction to proceed. And yet Mrs. Armytage knew her 
 way perfectly well about Soho. She was lowering her veil, as a 
 preliminary measure, when she caught sight of Simon Lefranc's 
 broad jovial face beaming through the window-pane. 
 
 "AVhat an impudent-looking fellow!" she thought. "He 
 looks like a paillasse — a merry-andrew to a quack doctor." 
 
 And so she raised her flowing drapery a little, and would have 
 crossed the street, when a handsome equipage drove rapidly up 
 and stopped at the door of the Chambers, She started, drew 
 back, and uttered an exclamation of surprise. 
 
 " She knows the people in the carriage," said Simon Lefranc to 
 
 X 2
 
 308 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 himself, and, for a wonder, -without the slightest foreign accent so' 
 far as his mental speech was concerned. " From what I hear of 
 her, my Duchess knows everybody ; what can be her game with 
 that miserable Tottlepot ? Is the fellow a rogue, as well as a 
 fool ? However, that is not my affair. I dare say they have been 
 doing a quiet bit of swindling together ; but Miss Duchess is far 
 above swindling in the eyes of S. Lefranc. Simon contemplates 
 her from a far more isolated point of view. Ah, my Duchess, my 
 Duchess, what a career you have had on our side of the water^ 
 and what a career you seem to be having on this ! " 
 
 The persons in the carriage had alighted, and Mrs. Armytage 
 was conversing with them. 
 
 " She knows the swells," mused Simon Lefranc, with a coun- 
 tenance no longer jovial, no longer beaming, but with a very 
 grave and serious expression overshadowing his features. "I have 
 been so long out of England that I have forgotten the heraldry I 
 used to study from the hatchments and the coach-makers in Long 
 Acre, and can't tell a bit to whom the carriage belongs. I can 
 make out three somethings on a golden shield, and a bloody hand, 
 — the swell must be a Bart, ; and, let's see — what's the motto on 
 the thingum-bob ? Ah, I see — Ex siidore, aurum. I'll have a 
 closer look at it, and at the swells too," 
 
 It certainly must have been by the merest chance in the world, 
 Mrs. Armytage, having despatched her business with her client 
 Tottlepot, was tranquilly going away, when this same carriage 
 drove up, and one of the tall footmen assisted four persons to 
 alight. There was Magdalen; there was Letitia; there was a 
 harmless curate belonging to the parish, who took much interest 
 in the Chambers, and was acting as cicerone on the present 
 occasion ; and there was a distinguished nobleman, officiating as 
 escort to the ladies, — none other, indeed, than the Earl of Car- 
 nation, He was a very pink young peer, with weak eyes, very 
 fair curly hair, and the fluffy phantom of a moustache, I believe 
 that Nature had fully intended him to be a Pool ; but his noble 
 mamma, who was in the secret, dying very young, his papa had 
 him brought up, quite by mistake, to be clever. Dear me, how 
 they had crammed the Earl of Carnation ! His mind was some- 
 thing like an over-boiled egg. It had been kept so long at an
 
 A JiAN AVEAraxG HIS heart upon his sleeve. 309 
 
 excessive temperature, that the shell had cracked a little, and the 
 yolk shrivelled up slightly. He would have known everything, 
 if he could have remembered anything; but a malicious imp 
 seemed to follow him about with a sponge, and wipe out every- 
 thing that, with feeble slate p^cil, he had inscribed on the tablet 
 of his memory. Philanthropy was thought to be his forte. It 
 was certainly his foible, and he was perpetually being trotted 
 through prisons, hospitals, soup-kitchens, ragged-schools, and 
 baths and wash-houses. At public meetings he could second a 
 resolution moved by an archbishop, or propose a vote of thanks 
 to the chairman. He had at one time been the hope of the 
 Conservative party, and was backed heavily for an attack on the 
 ministry, — it was before he came to the title, and when he was 
 fche Honourable Claude Crichton, — but he broke down in the first 
 paragraph of his speech, beginning, " The weiterated wemon- 
 stwances of honourable gentlemen opposite confirm me in the 
 wesolve of weviewing their weasons for weceding," and so forth. 
 The head of the party said, after this, that Claude Crichton was 
 no good, and that the sooner he went up to the Lords the better. 
 In due process of time he came to his coronet, and addicted 
 himself to philanthropy. He never spoke in the House ; but he 
 was an industrious attendant at the debates, and even at the 
 morning judicial sittings, where his eye-glass and his simper must 
 have been of great assistance to the law lords in determining the 
 appeal of Gottee Humguffi Baloa Eaffee Loll v. Chowder Earn 
 Bufiee Cowrie Jug (from Bombay). His chaplain wrote a little 
 pamphlet for him now and then, about crime, or education, or 
 wash-houses, which Mr. Hatchard published, and which was 
 favourably reviewed in the John Bull. He didn't do anybody 
 any harm; but he didn't do much good; for the Earl of Carnation 
 was inconceivably stingy, and, had he not been a peer of the 
 realm, would have made a model bill-discounter. At Eton he 
 used to be called " Skinflint," and at Oxford " Spooney." 
 
 Mrs. Armytage and he were very old friends. She was always pro- 
 foundly obsequious to him, and flattered him enormously; and his 
 lordship was good enough to say he thought her a very superior 
 kind of woman. Elorence regretted sometimes that she had not 
 cultivated his acquaintance more ; even as Napoleon sighed in the
 
 310 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 midst of Ma despotism to be able to nestle dans les drops d'un rot 
 constitutionnel. She often tliought how nice and comfortable it 
 •would be to give up intrigue and excitement and impulse, and 
 settle down quietly in the philanthropic and beneficent line of 
 business. "It can't be so very difficult to do good," she 
 reasoned. " How many envious and malicious and stupid people- 
 I know who torment their husbands and persecute their children^ 
 and yet out of doors might be photographed as Dorcas or the- 
 good Samaritan. But, then, you want so much ready money, and 
 they are so uninteresting these ragged-school and wash-house 
 creatures, and it's such a bore. I can understand the Pope and 
 the Cardinals washing tlie feet of the pilgrims, and waiting upon 
 them at dinner. It's a ceremony, and grand and stately, and 
 that kind of thing. There's the guardia nohile looking on, and 
 the Roman ladies and the corps dijylomatique, and there are horse- 
 races afterwards, and St. Peter's illuminated in the evening. I 
 wish they would make being good in England a little livelier.. 
 AVhy are they all dull, and obtuse, and bilious, these good 
 people ? They physic themselves quite as much as they do the 
 poor, they preach temperance because their digestion is all wrong, 
 and a glass of Madeira half kills them. They insist upon people 
 reading tracts because they can't understand Thackeray and 
 think Dickens's fun wickedness. I wish there was a funny 
 clergyman like the Eowland Hill they talk about. I am sure he 
 would draw. I'm sure I'd go to church." So reasoned this wicked 
 little woman of the world, and from her last remark you may- 
 gather that she flourished before the era of the sainted Spurgeou. 
 A great deal of polite gesticulation, but very little real conver- 
 sation, took place among the party who met so oddly on the pave- 
 ment in front of the Monmouth Chambers. There is a kind of 
 discourse, very prevalent in genteel society, whicii mainly consists- 
 in the rustling of silks, the showing of teeth, the liberal dispen- 
 sation of curtsies and smiles, the repetition of expressions of 
 pleasure and surprise, but into which words that have any 
 tangible meaning enter for but very little. If there be a lapdog 
 close by, or a servant to order about, this art of saying nothing, 
 with much ado about it, becomes easier. Ladies are the great adepts 
 in this art of simulating speech. You shall hear two women who
 
 A MAN WEARING HIS HEART UPON HIS SLEEVE. 311 
 
 Lave actually nothing to say to one another go in for half an hour 
 in the interchange of elegant flummeries. Men are not so clever. 
 If they don't know one another, they stare, and look black, and 
 at the first opportunity make a rush. It was for this reason tiiat 
 glees and songs were introduced between the speeches at public 
 dinners. They save men Avho are strangers to one another from 
 a silence which might at last become intolerable, and lead a 
 tongue-tied man to hurl a bottle at his opposite neighbour by 
 way of relief For, somehow or anotlier, it is difficult for an 
 attaclie of the House of Montague to divest himself of the idea 
 that the other fellow yonder, who belongs to the Capulet faction, 
 and is consequently to be hated and avoided, is biting his thumb 
 at him. The greatest enemy I ever had was a man I had never 
 met ; and the week after we became acquainted he wanted to lend 
 me a hundred pounds. 
 
 Magdalen had never spoken to Mrs. Armytage since that weU- 
 remembered evening at the Goldthorpe, late Pogthorpe Eoad, 
 Station. Miss Salusbury had seen the celebrated little Indian 
 widow, and had heard of her countless times. Ton may imagine 
 how pleasant the task of introduction was to Miss Hill ; how 
 touching were Mrs. Armytage's inquiries after dear Lady Gold- 
 thorpe, and Sir Jasper, and Captain AVilliam, and all the living 
 Sons of Mammon. Miss Salusbury gave Florence a good broad 
 look of hearty dislike, and would have instantly commanded Lord 
 Carnation to escort her into the Chambers ; but that meek and 
 philanthropic nobleman was in the trammels of the widow. 
 Hercules in a street in Soho, and Omphale in a walking-dress and 
 her bonnet on, and no more than a parasol for a distaflf, are not 
 very realisable images ; but Florence Omphale Armytage held 
 Hercules, Earl of Carnation, very tightly iu the summer sun and 
 on the Soho pavement, aud wound hiui round her finger several 
 times before she permitted him to depart. " A monstrous clever 
 woman," thought the egregious young man, as she fluttered and 
 shook her ringlets at him. 
 
 " If I were clear and had a thousand pounds," thought 
 Florence, " I'd be Countess of Carnation iu a month, and be as 
 good as gold; but it can't be done for less, and I don't see how it 
 can be done at all. Heigho ! "
 
 312 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 She thought "Heiglio!" but she didn't say " Heigbo ! " 
 Nobody does, any more than they say "Tush!" or "Psba!" or, 
 as Mr. Xinglake once pointed out, " Alas ! " 
 
 Of course the hidies explained their errand in Sobo. They bad 
 come to see a most meritorious institution, admirably conducted — 
 at which the curate who had not been introduced to anybody, and 
 was staring uneasily at the steward, who was bowing backwards, 
 after the manner of theatrical managers when royalty comes to 
 the theatre, only without the wax-candles, and so nearly tripping 
 up his wife, who was peeping from under bis arms at the gentle- 
 folks who had come in the grand carriage — at which the curate, I 
 repeat, blushed violently and looked at his watch. "Whereupon 
 Mrs. Armytage looked at a tiny jewelled toy she carried at her 
 waist likewise ; and there were more curtsies and genuflections, 
 and showings of teeth and rustliugs of dresses, and Florence, 
 saying, in an airy manner that as a widow she was privileged to 
 walk alone, and that she had left her carriage in Eegent Street, 
 took an aflectionate leave of Lord Carnation, and a gracious one of 
 Magdalen, and a cool one of Letitia, and a peeress-to-a-puppy one 
 of the curate, and patronised everybody, including the steward 
 and his wife, including the lodgers looking from the windows, and 
 fluttered away. O gorgeous little galley with silken sails and 
 prow of gold! gondola of delights, built to float upon the 
 Idle Lake, and not to be tempest-tost and tempest-lost upon the 
 great Black Sea of Crime ! 
 
 "A real lady," the steward remarked deferentially, as he 
 ushered the distinguished party into the corridor; " very rich, I'm 
 told ; came here first with the Lord Bishop of St. Blaise — a 
 French Bishop. Most charitable lady. Half keeps one of our 
 poor gentlemen, who is a beautiful poet, and does a bit of copying. 
 This way, ladies, if you please." 
 
 "A little saucy, impudent, artful-looking thing," Miss Salus- 
 bury remarked energetically. " I should like to box her ears. Is 
 there no by-law in society for turning that woman out of it ? " 
 
 " There is nothing against her," Magdalen remarked gently — 
 she was not wont to speak of her in so tolerant a manner. " She 
 is rich, and a widow, and has lived much abroad. She is very 
 eccentric, and knows quantities of strange people, but there has
 
 A MAN WEARING HIS HEART UPON HIS SLEEVE. 313 
 
 been nothing in ber conduct to justify her exclusion from what we 
 term society." 
 
 "I dare say," quoth Miss Salusbury, "that she knows no 
 people who can be stranger or can be better than they should be, 
 or than she is herself. She's after no good. She's on the cross, 
 and not at all upon the square." 
 
 " The cross ! the square ! what do you mean ? " 
 
 "Never mind ; let's go through this wonderful dingy old place. 
 I do hope that the people are washed, and are not in rags, and that 
 I'm not to see the Eighth Commandment hung up everywhere. I 
 often wonder how it is that the people who are always supposed 
 to be stealing seldom have anything to eat, and never have any 
 money, and that the people who never steal roll in riches. I 
 wonder whether my papa would have been quite so well off if my 
 Norman ancestors had learnt the Eighth Commandment by heart 
 and acted upon it ! " 
 
 By this time the curate had fallen into a cold fit of horror, and 
 looked upon Letitia as a beauteous image of heterodoxy. Miss 
 Hill did not proifer any reply to her companion's remarks ; 
 indeed, she was an inveterate illuminator of moral and Scriptural 
 placards, from the precepts against stealing to the warning, 
 " Eat, but pocket nothing," of Sunday-school treats. Lord Car- 
 nation was rather amused than otherwise. Miss Salusbury was a 
 relief in his dreary pilgrimage of duty.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 A MA:S^ WEAEINa HIS HEAfiT "UPON HIS SLEEVE. 
 
 " Miss Salusbuet is not so clever as the little widow," said 
 Lord Carnation to bimself ; "but she's plucky, and knows a lot. 
 But the widow ! — what a committee she might get up for a burnt- 
 out or a famine-relief fund. If the women didn't hate her so, she 
 ought to go in against slavery. I wish she'd cram me about crime 
 and reformation, and that sort of thing. I wonder where she lives ! 
 "Where does she live ?" he asked aloud, turning to Magdalen. 
 
 " To whom do you allude, my lord ? " 
 
 "Why, our little friend, Mrs. What'shername— Mrs. Army- 
 tage." 
 
 " Behind the scenes, I should think," broke in Letitia petu- 
 lantly. "Inquire at the stage-door. This way for the riders. 
 You'll soon find her out. Lord Carnation." 
 
 The curate — they were inspecting the dormitories by this time — 
 passed from a cold into a hot perspiration of dismay. " Beautiful, 
 but lost creature," he mentally exclaimed, " deprived, no doubt, of 
 maternal care at an early age ; undisciplined mind, misapplied 
 talents ! Ah, what an Eden choked with weeds and tares ! " 
 
 The curate wasn't a humbug. He was only an amiable young 
 man, who had been his mother's pet and the joy of a High-Church 
 watering-place in Devonshire, where devotion and pretty things 
 went hand in hand. He had looked at life through the stained- 
 glass oriel of a gimcrack chapel, and had suddenly been trans- 
 planted from the carved-and-gilt and vellum-bound and wax- 
 candled Yale of Eest in the sweet south, to this great brabbling, 
 murky, gas-lit Soho, where he had his corns trodden on and the 
 angles of his fine feelings chipped off every day in the week. He was 
 a curate with an Ideal ; but to have turned it to any practical use^ 
 be should have been a police-constable, and taken a spell of night
 
 A MAX WEARING HIS HEART UPON HIS SLEEVE. 3 15 
 
 duty for a fortuight. To a clergyman "who really wialies to do 
 good among the poor and the vicious, a bull's-eye is an admirable 
 companion to a Bible. 
 
 " Mrs. Arraytage," Magdalen said slowly, in reply to the earl's 
 query, " resides habitually in Paris and in Brighton. Sometimes, 
 I believe, she stays with her aged fiither, who lives in some 
 boarding-house near Bayawater, I believe, and to whom she is 
 very kind. But she is of course free to go where she lists, and, as 
 I have said, is very eccentric, and, I am told, stays a great deal at 
 hotels, and even in furnished lodgings." 
 
 " I have her address, if you please, my lady," the steward said. 
 " Here it is, in Albert Street, Knightsbridge. She gave me the 
 card the first time she employed Mr. Tottlepot, — that's one of our 
 poor gentlemen, — the poet that she gives copying to." 
 
 It was noticed afterwards, as strange circumstances in the 
 career of this woman, that she never assumed an alias, and that 
 she never concealed her dwelling-place. What she did was done 
 in the open. Tou remember the story of the First Napoleon and 
 Cardinal Fesch, when the latter endeavoured to dissuade him from 
 undertaking the invasion of Eussia. He led the Cardinal to the 
 window, opened it, and pointed out into the sky. It was night, 
 and a black one. '*'Do you see that star?" he asked. "No, 
 sire," answered the Cardinal. "But I do," said the Emperor, 
 and shut the window, and invaded Eussia, and came to the end 
 you all know. Florence Armytage had her star, invisible to other 
 eyes, and it bade her keep straight on in the broad, smooth, 
 shining road, unto the end that was coming. 
 
 The distinguished party saw all that was to be seen in the 
 Monmouth Chambers : — dormitories, kitchens, coffee-room, smok- 
 ing-room even, and, of course, praised and admired the general 
 air of neatness, cleanliness, and comfort that reigned. I wonder 
 they did not ask to see the refractory-wai-d or the solitary cell, or 
 the cat-o'-nine tails, sealed with the seal of the visiting justice. 
 For it is a strange, but nevertheless a very true thing, that people 
 who haunt "institutions" grow hardened to them. "Whatever 
 the place be, — hospital, school, gaol, asylum, or madhouse, — an 
 indefinable sensation comes over the visitor that he is a superior 
 being, and that the inmates have got into some inexplicable scrape.
 
 316 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 I have been myself over some hundreds of these institutions, but 
 have tried in vain to attain the hardened stage which comes so 
 naturally to professed philanthropists. I always feel uneasy, and 
 ask myself what right I have to be there, and how I should like 
 myself to be put into a description of moral cage, and exhibited 
 by a kind of Moral Beef-eater, as though I were a wombat or a 
 giraffe, and inspected, patronised, and approved of. Eor who 
 knows what to-morx"ow may bring forth ? Who is so sane but he 
 may need the douche-bath and the padded room some day? Wlio 
 so virtuous but he may have to hold up his hand at the bidding of 
 the clerk of the arraigns and plead ? Who so hale and strong but 
 he may find the water-bed a luxury, and the hospital-nurse his 
 best friend ? Who so rich but the time may come when his only 
 refuge- shall be the old man's ward, and he look out eagerly for 
 meat-days, and remember Christmas chiefly in connection with an 
 allowance of snuff and a pint of strong ale : — the bounty of the 
 guardians? Haughty and insolent salt ones of the earth, take 
 down a book written by one who was the pride of his age, and the 
 favourite of a queen, and lay for years a captive in a hole of the 
 White Tower. Eead what Ealcigh writes of Darius. How he 
 wore purple and a crown of gold in the morning, and was the 
 master of millions, and how at night he lay naked and bleeding 
 and forlorn on the ground. \''elvet and brocade, carving and 
 gilding, may fade away, and leave nothing but the pauper's pallet, 
 or, worse, a whitewashed cell, and the prison task-master in- 
 structing you in the art of cobbling shoes, or making cane-bottoms 
 for chairs. And the first shall be last, and the last first ; and the 
 High Sheriff take a turn in the dock, and the beggar make out 
 Dive's mittimus for sleeping under a hedge instead of a four- 
 poster with an eider-down quilt ; and thank God for it, or the 
 gorge of pride would rise and burst us asunder. 
 
 The Earl of Carnation troubled not his noble mind with such 
 reflections. Don't you who read them think them stale and trite, 
 — if, indeed, you have not skipped them altogether ? But the 
 mania for patronising and placarding the Eighth Commandment, 
 and showering tracts, and " going over institutions," is one of the 
 great curses of this age, next to the eternal "talkee, talkee" about 
 people's "missions " and " Social Science," and similar lunacies of
 
 A MAN AVEAraNG HIS HEART UPON HIS SLEEVE. 317 
 
 distempered vanity ; and many philanthropists vrould do well to 
 remember what Richard Oastler said to Sir Robert Peel in the 
 picture-gallery at Tamworth. " Good God, Sir Robert," — looking 
 at an exquisite child-picture by Landseer, — "your daughter might 
 have been a factory-girl." Tes; and the factory-girl might have 
 been cited as a shining example of all the virtues, regal as well as 
 domestic, had she been born to be Empress of Mofussilistan, with 
 twenty millions a year for a Civil List. 
 
 The tour of inspection came to an end at last. It was close 
 upon noon, and the horizon of the Earl of Carnation began to be 
 gilt with the prospect of luncheon. There was but one place 
 more to visit — the reading-room. To tlie library the harmless 
 curate had been a munificent donor, and had made the shelves 
 creak beneath High-Church chronicles, tales, tracts, and poetry. 
 Just as the steward was opening the door, there glided by, 
 coming from the regions above, the poet Tottlepot. He had 
 his little portfolio under his arm, and seemed in a great hurry. 
 Poets are not always so punctual in keeping their appointments. 
 
 " That's the poor gentleman I spoke about to your lordship 
 and ladyships," the steward remarked, as the bard passed down 
 the corridor. " His handwriting's beautiful ; but if it wasn't 
 for the kind lady who employs him, I do believe that he'd half 
 starve." 
 
 Magdalen made a note on her tablets. The heart of Tottlepot, 
 she thought, should be rejoiced that night. She little knew that 
 the poet had just earned a pocketful of sovereigns. 
 
 " He looks very much like an old humbug," remarked Miss 
 Salusbury. " I suppose he'd be offended if one were to give him. 
 any money. There was a man who used to write in the poet's 
 corner of our county newspaper, and who wanted to fight a duel 
 with papa because he wasn't asked to dinner. I don't believe in 
 any poets except ' Vates ' of the Morning Advertiser, and he's 
 more a prophet than a poet. However, your poet looks very 
 poor. Lord Carnation, you'd better leave him a check for five 
 pounds." 
 
 The young nobleman looked very uneasy at this recommenda- 
 tion, and murmured something about " the many calls upon liim." 
 
 It is true that an infinity of calls were made upon the Earl of
 
 818 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Carnation ; but one of tbe most difficult things in the world was 
 to find his lordship at home. 
 
 " And it is thus they pass the bard," Tottlepot said with a bitter 
 groan, as he emerged into the street : " pass him with cou.tumely 
 and neglect. But a day will come — a day will come." And 
 away went Tottlepot to keep his appointment in Leicester Square. 
 
 Simon Lefrauc saw him — Who but he ? Simon had been 
 wearing his heart upon his sleeve, and airing it in the sunshine, 
 in front of a little tobacconist's and periodical shop opposite the 
 Chambers. As Tottlepot crossed the road, Simon passed behind 
 him, and smote bim in a jovial manner on the shoulder. 
 
 The poor poet turned round. His face was very livid, and he 
 trembled all over. 
 
 " Courage, mon ga7-^on; courage, my Tottlepot," Simon said in 
 his cheery manner. " Bright days are in store for thee, my poet." 
 And having dismissed him somewhat reassured, but still very 
 nervous, Simon took to sporting that heart of his — always on his 
 sleeve, I need not say — round the adjacent street-coi'ners, and in 
 front of the cab-stand, and in the entries of half a dozen little 
 shops. The mid-day beer-boy was delighted with him, and almost 
 felt inclined to give him eleemosynary refreshment from his can. 
 The little children danced round him, and made much of a half- 
 penny which he bestowed on one of their number. A troupe 
 of Ethiopian serenaders sang, it seemed, their most enlivening 
 ditties specially for him. The very sparrows of Soho appeared to 
 peck their morsels round about his feet without diffidence. Ah, 
 it is a fine thing to wear our heart upon our sleeve, and to make 
 a sunshine wherever we go ! Fov all his little trips about, how- 
 ever, I don't think for two consecutive minutes Simon ever lost 
 sight of the doorway of the Monmouth Chambers, or the grand 
 carriage there drawn up. 
 
 Eutliyn Pendragon was in the reading-room brooding over a 
 book as the distinguished party entered. The little old marquis 
 was close by, pottering too over his interminable and never-to- 
 be-terminated Dictionary. Euthyn looked up as the ladies and 
 gentlemen entered. He heard the steward whisper, "Prench 
 nobleman," and then " Clergyman of the Church of England." 
 He knew himself to be alluded to. He felt his face on fire. He
 
 A MAN WEARING HIS HEART UPON HIS SLEEVE. 319 
 
 felt first a cataract of molten lead, and then one of ice, flow down 
 his back. He felt the moisture at the roots of his hair, on his 
 eyelids. He felt his heart bound, like a newly-caged wild beast 
 striving to dash itself to death against the bars of its den. He 
 felt that if one mercy could be bestowed upon him, one crownino- 
 act of grace and pity, it would be for the floor of this mean room 
 to open and swallow him up from sight and shame. But it was 
 not to be so ; and he was to eat his Humble Pie to the very last 
 flake of the crust. 
 
 The curate, usually so harmless, and always well-meaning, was 
 enabled, quite unconsciously, to do at this time a very pretty piece 
 of mischief. He came up to where Pendragon sat, his hair almost 
 touching the book before him, and made use of some simperino-lj- 
 good-hearted expressions, setting forth, it may have been, that he 
 was sorry to see a clergyman so reduced in circumstances, but 
 that he was glad to see him engaged in study, and the like. 
 
 Euthyn Pendragon started to his feet with a cry. 
 
 " What the devil is that to you ?" he demanded ferociously of 
 the amazed curate. 
 
 The steward, quite shocked, stepped forward, for he thought 
 the clergyman was about to hurl the book he had been reading at 
 his brother parson. As for Lord Carnation, he looked more 
 amused than otherwise. 
 
 "Wides wusty," he simpered, adjusting his eye-glass; "don't 
 like being asked questions sometimes. "Wemember a man in 
 Bedlam wanting to stwangle me because I asked_why he cut his 
 wife and thwee childwen's heads ofi". Only yesterday, burglar in 
 penitentiary twied to stab chaplain, because he asked him to say 
 * Twinkle, twinkle, little' — what was it ?" — here Lord Carnation's 
 memory played him false — "before self and the Dean of 
 Dorking." 
 
 Letitia and Magdalen had both recognised the ex-curate of 
 Swordsley, the shabby lodger in the shabby Chambers. The 
 generous Amazon would have rushed forward to shake hands with 
 Pendragon ; but a stern grasp withheld, a stern, albeit low, voice 
 forbade her. 
 
 " Let us go," said Magdalen Hill, aid positively forced her 
 companion from the room.
 
 320 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 '• This is no place for us," slie added, pale and scared, when 
 they were in the corridor. 
 
 " It's no place for him," Letitia exclaimed indignantly. " Poor 
 fellow ! he looks half-starved. Let us go back, Magdalen. Curb 
 your devilish pride for once. Say but one word. Shall I call him 
 tons?" 
 
 She would not curb her pride, all demoniacal as it may have 
 been. She would not move. She would not say the word. Ah, 
 that tug at the bridle ! Ah, that step in advance ! Ah, that 
 word, which women will not speak ! It may be that it was but 
 a little word, after all, that first sowed dissension between 
 Menelaus and Helen, and that had the word been spoken in 
 good season all the woes of Troy might have been spared. 
 
 As it was, Magdalen Hill marched resolutely towards her 
 carriage, and Lord Carnation, still amused, and the curate, still 
 amazed, followed. The steward would have lingered for a moment 
 to give the unmannerly lodger a week's notice to quit the Cham- 
 bers ; but Miss Salusbury prevented him. 
 
 "Tou know that gentleman ? " she asked. 
 
 " I'm sure, madam, I'm very sorry that he should have so mis- 
 behaved himself. The committee won't allow him to stay after 
 this, I needn't say." 
 
 " I hope they won't. He ought never to have been here at all, 
 I ask you if you know him." 
 
 " Surely, madam. He gave his name. He doesn't seem to 
 be ashamed of it. The Eeverend Ruthyn Pendragon — that's 
 it." 
 
 " Very well, give him this piece of paper. Tou need not say 
 anything about it to anybody. Tou seem a very deceit sort of 
 fellow; there's a sovereign for you." And Miss Salusbury hurried 
 after her companions, and the carriage drove away. 
 
 They dropped the curate at a schoolhouse, where some eighty 
 children howled hymns from morning till night, and could read 
 all the genealogies in Scripture with tolerable fluency, but were 
 utterly unable to spell through an ordinary paragraph in the news- 
 paper. They dropped Lord Carnation at his club in Pall Mall,. 
 where he lunclied, — at the expense of the club. And then Letitia 
 Salusbury turned to Magdalen Hill and said.
 
 A MAN WEAllIXG HIS HEART UPON HIS SLEEVE. 321 
 
 "Magdalen," — slie -n-oald not condescend to use a diminutive, 
 — " jou have treated that man shamefully." 
 
 "I am not well. Let us go home," was all that Magdalen 
 would reply, hiding her face in her handkerchief — but not to 
 weep, I am afraid. 
 
 When the carriage had been bowed away from the Chambers 
 by the steward and his wife, the former imparted to his helpmate 
 the strange incident that had occurred in the reading-room, and 
 showed her the paper that he was to deliver to Pendragon. It 
 was not sealed, and I fear that Mrs. Steward, incited by the 
 natural curiosity of her sex, — and has our sex no "natural 
 curiosity," I should like to know ? — would have had little hesita- 
 tion in gleaming some knowledge of its contents, but for the 
 salutary rigid ideas of discipline entertained by her husband. 
 
 " jS'o, no," he said ; " no pollprying. I'll go and take it to the 
 parson at once, for fear of accidents." 
 
 He met Euthyn Pendragon coming hurriedly from the reading- 
 room. 
 
 "I am goiug away," Euthyn said, in a thick strange voice. "I 
 owe nothing, and am free to depart." 
 
 " That you may please yourself about," retorted the steward ; 
 ^* but one of the ladies left this for you, and you may as well read 
 it before you go." 
 
 Pendragon took the paper from the other's hand. It had been 
 hastily folded, or rather crumpled, together. He read it, and 
 turned hia head away, for his eyes were fall of tears.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 NEMESIS IN PLAIN CLOTHES. 
 
 The greatest men liave their -weaknesses : their little pencJmnts 
 and propensities. Thus the weakness of Inspector Millament 
 was for reading cheap periodicals, and that of Sergeant South for 
 studying playbills. 
 
 Our old acquaintance, Mr. Sims, who has been very busy aU 
 this time, although you have not heard so much about him, used 
 to be very partial to theatrical performances, and went to the 
 play, in more senses than one, two or three times a week; but the 
 dramatic fancy of Sergeant South took more of a theoretical than 
 of a practical turn. If velnti in speculum were his motto, it was 
 more to look in the window where the playbill hung than to gaze 
 into the mirror of the proscenium. Xow and then the Sergeant 
 entered the doors of a theatre ; but he went habitually behind the 
 scenes, and eschewed the audience part of the house. It was said 
 that Sergeant South had once passed three months of his existence 
 as a supernumerary at one of our principal places of Thespian 
 amusement, and that he went on the stage regularly every night, 
 either accoutred in a plumed bonnet and red tights, and carrying 
 a banner, or else arrayed in a tunic and buff boots, and bearing a 
 tin javelin as one of the retainers of a ruthless baron. Humble 
 as was his standing in that Theatre Eoyal, it did not prevent his 
 holding frequent and secret conference with the manager ; and at 
 the end of the three months it so happened that Sergeant South 
 disappeared without warning, and without troubling the " super- 
 master " for his outstanding salary ; and that two or three days 
 afterwards he was constrained, through a keen sense of duty 
 towards his country in general, and the ends of justice in par- 
 ticular, to give evidence at the Marlborough Street Police Court 
 against one Mouchy, a felonious employe of the theatre, who had
 
 NEMESIS IN PLAIN CLOTHES. 323 
 
 pilfered many articles of ricli costume from the dressing-rooms. 
 The Sergeant was highly complimented by the presiding magis- 
 trate on the astuteness and sagacity he had displayed in tracing 
 the perpetrator of so many robberies. 
 
 But it was, after all, towards the playbills that Sergeant South 
 displayed the most ardent and disinterested affection. He was 
 always pondering over these black and red letter documents, and 
 spelling over their contents with a solicitude tliat was more than 
 affectionate : it was paternal. His hands in his pockets and his 
 head ou one side. Sergeant South would go through the entire 
 contents, from the name of the theatre and the address of the 
 manager and lessee to t]ie,Vivant Regina et Princeps and "No 
 Money returned," at the bottom. He would bestow the same 
 amount of attention on the bill of some transpontine saloon, with 
 three monstrous and murderous melodrauias per night, as upon 
 the lordly proclamations of the Italian Opera, with their announce- 
 ments of Don Giovanni " by command," or a grand baUet " by 
 desire." Nothing in playbill literature came amiss to him. He 
 did not disdain the placards of music-halls, of suburban gardens, 
 of raree-shows, or dwarf and giant exhibitions, or nigger-singers, 
 or " drawiug-room entertainments" — which last I take to be the 
 very lowest kind of popular amusement that this, our present era 
 of civilisation, has seen. Sergeant South had an eye for all these 
 waifs and strays of recreation. He liked to linger at stationers' 
 and tobacconists' shops and see his beloved playbill-boards re- 
 posing on the area-railiugs. He knew all the bill-stickers, and 
 watched them at their work assiduously. There was a large 
 theatrical public-house which he specially affected, and of which 
 not only the coffee-room, but the very walls of the bar were 
 thickly covered with playbills. The inexpressibly dilapidated 
 men and women — where do they all come from, and whither are 
 they all going ? — who sell programmes, " books of the Hopera," 
 and " bills of the play " in the purlieus of our dramatic and lyric 
 fanes were all known to Sergeant South, He was known, like- 
 wise, to all those gentry, and, to tell truth, a little feared by 
 them. 
 
 Sergeant South, in age, was wavering between the thirties and 
 the forties : but seemed unable to make up his mind towards the
 
 324 THE SEVEN SONS OE MAMMON. 
 
 latter. He was the youngest looking of middle-aged men, ^vith. 
 a fresh blue eye, and chestnut hair, and a little pink spot on each 
 cheek, and an almost downy whisker. But for thick-serried, 
 ranges of crow's-feet under his eyes, and some ominous lines 
 about his mouth, he would have looked a mere boy ; as it was, he 
 had somewhat the appearance of a youth who had been stopping 
 up rather late on the night-side of life. Sergeant South dressed 
 with exquisite neatness, and not without a certain kind of 
 elegance. His turn-down collar was irreproachably white ; his 
 iscarf beautifully tied ; his liorse-shoe pin quiet, but handsome. 
 His hair was always well brushed. He wore a natty watch-guard 
 and a neat signet-ring. If there was one particular in which he 
 did not display taste, or elegance, or, indeed, neatness, it was in 
 that of boots. Those leathern casings were very thick and clumsy, 
 and had hobnails, and were but indifferently well polished. It is a 
 curious fact, but you may in general recognize gentlemen of the 
 profession of Sergeant South, and under what would otherwise be 
 the most impenetrable of disguises, by their boots. 
 
 Sergeant South's staunch friend, confidential comrade, and 
 superior, ijideed, in the hierarchy to which both belonged, was 
 Inspector Millament. He should have been mentioned first 
 perhaps ; but there is yet time to make him full amends. 
 Besides, he was a tranquil, peace-loving man, who never cared to 
 thrust himself foremost. Give him but the " Parlour Magazine," 
 the " Family Miscellany," the " Backstairs Herald," all highly 
 popular penny journals at that day, and he was satisfied. He 
 waded through the endless romances published in his beloved 
 serials with a calm and never-failing delight. "To be continued 
 in our next " were words of hope and joy to him. It is true that 
 he habitually mixed up the plots of the novels be read into an 
 inextricable jumble of perplexity ; that the marquis in one story 
 became dovetailed on to the gipsy-chief in the other, and the 
 abducted heiress's adventures were frequently intertwined with 
 those of the much-wronged ballet-dancer. Inspector Millament 
 vexed himself very little about such trifling incongruities. He 
 read and read on, and wandered in a world of dormant peerages, 
 of murderous baronets, and ladies of title addicted to the study 
 of toxicology, of gipsies and brigand-chiefs, men with masks and
 
 KEJIESIS IX PLAIN CLOTHES. 325 
 
 ■vTomen with daggers, of stolen childreu, withered hags, heartless 
 gamesters, nefarious rout's, foreiga princesses, Jesuit fathers, 
 grave-diggers, resurrection-meu, lunatics, and ghosts. This was 
 his ideal world. Just deducting the ghosts, I don't think that 
 the world he really lived and played a very powerful and occult 
 part in, was a world much less strange or much less terrible ; but 
 who regards the marvels that surround him ? who takes account 
 of the things that lie at his feet ? who will believe that the events 
 enacting under his eyes are History ? We have all of us a 
 horizon at the end of our noses ; but we disdain to look so closely, 
 and must strain our eyes far, far afield. Nob many weeks since, 
 a irood friend was kind enough to remonstrate with me on the 
 utter and glaring improbability, nay impossibility of some of the 
 characters I have drawn in this story. In vain I strove to 
 assure him that I had taken the world as I found it, and painted 
 (with a free brush, it might be) but from the very life. With 
 great dilEculty he granted Mrs. Armytage. I Iiad something to 
 show him which disarmed even his scepticism as to the veri- 
 semblance of that lady; but as for Mr. Sims, or for Ephraim Tigg 
 the Rasper, he would not hear of them for a moment. And yet 
 I think I know where to put my hand on people ten times stranger 
 in their ways of life than Sims or Tigg, poor, common rogues as 
 they are ; and but a very few days after our controversy, my 
 friend came well nigh raving to me about the details of the 
 "Northumberland Street Tragedy!" Tragedy! a wretched Co- 
 burg melodrama it was, at best ; there are real iive-act tragedies 
 going on about us, every day, — far more fearful, far more horrify- 
 ing than that slaughter-house fray. The ladies are even more 
 difficult to convince than the gentlemen. Tliey toon'f have Mrs. 
 Armytage. There was never anybody lilce her, they say. !Mis3 
 Salusbury also is to them simply an impossible character. These 
 complaints, these protests, constantly reach me. I am bidden to 
 write a story all about purity and honesty, and truth, and the 
 home-affections, and the rest of it. Well, I will try to do so; but 
 you must not be surprised to find my narrative so many blank 
 pages. It would be wi-iting so many lines in white chalk on so 
 many planes of virgin snow. If you want laii cVdnesse fresh from 
 the animal, you must go elsewhere. I have none to sell. Which
 
 326 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 is best, I wonder : to write namby-pamby historiettes of Jemmy 
 and Jenny Jessamy's love _ passages ; to describe monsters of 
 innocence and loveliness ; to paint a twopenny Garden of Eden, 
 with no serpent in it more dangerous than a Jesuit priest, — the 
 poor Jesuits ! they have never done half the harm that the people 
 who go into frenzies of bigotry about them have done, — or to 
 describe the world as it wags, not only in its good, but in its evil 
 fashion? Do all the good books that are written about good 
 people save tlieir readers from being covetous, and lying, and 
 slanderous, and sensual ? Are the gentlefolks who come up to 
 the Divorce Court quite ignorant of the nature of cold-boiled- 
 veal-without-salt novels (in three vols.) ? And, finally, how 
 would you like a newspaper in which there were no police-reports, 
 no law or assize intelligence, no leading articles on any other sub- 
 jects save missionary societies, governess institutions, the art of 
 pickling onions, and the best means of obliterating freckles ? 
 "While I live, and while I write, I shall just tell the stories of the 
 people I have met, and of the lives they have led, — so far as I 
 have known them, — in my own fashion; and when I begin to paint 
 the Graces from imagination, and the Virtues from hearsay, it will 
 be time for me to retire to the Asylum for Idiots at Earlswood, 
 and gibber. 
 
 There is another kind of story-telling in which, perhaps, with 
 some moderate faculty of humour and observation, and with a 
 liver very much out of order, one might succeed. Shall I map out 
 a world for you bounded on one side by Belgravia, and on the 
 other by Eussell Square: assume that aU my acquaintances are in 
 the habit of dining at seven o'clock, going to court, and keeping 
 carriages and pair, and sneer at the unhappy wretches who have 
 " plated side-dishes " at their feasts, call their eighteenpenny claret 
 Laffitte, hire greengrocers to wait upon them on state occasions, and 
 proceed to the Drawing-Eoom at St. James's in a hired cab? or shall 
 I be in a perpetual fume because people " go about saying things 
 about me," because Jones accuses me of opium-eating, and Tomp- 
 kins of having poisoned my grandmother, and Eobinson of being 
 a retui-ned convict ? Goodness gracious ! what does it all matter ? 
 what harm is there in the greengrocer so long as he is an honest 
 man, and has clean hands, and doesn't spill the lobster-sauce
 
 NEMESIS IN PLAIN CLOTHES. 327 
 
 over our pantaloons? I would rather help myself from the table; 
 but am I to quarrel with my neiglibour for preferring the green- 
 grocer and the grim ceremony of handing things round ? And 
 the eighteenpenny claret. Who does not tell fibs about his wine ? 
 Cambaceres, Talleyrand, were not always to be depended upon in 
 their stories about their vintages. I have heard even teetotallers 
 grow Miinchausenesque about the virtues of strange pumps. 
 There is a certain stage of good-fellowship when all men — to the 
 most truthful — have a tendency towards glorifying themselves 
 and telling lies. And the people who '• go about saying things," 
 — a fico for them all ! — have they got ninety-eight thousand pounds 
 snugly lying in consols ? Are they the only living descendants 
 of Timour the Tartar, and Marino Faliero ? Can they squeeze a 
 pewter-pot flat between their fingers, or swallow a red-hot poker, 
 or play the overture to Der FreiscJiiitz on their chins ? I may 
 have these powers and possessions, or I may not. Do you think 
 that you can say more against me than I can against you ? How 
 about that eight-day clock ? How about that little afiair at Tor- 
 quay ? I knew the scale in a contested election turned once by 
 this simple placard, " Ask Mr. A. (one of the candidates) about 
 the widow of poor Mr. Smith." There had never been a widow 
 of poor Mr. Smith, there had never been a poor Mr. Smith at all ; 
 but the placard took amazingly ; it was copied and repeated every- 
 where : the candidate was pursued by howling mobs demanding 
 what he had done with poor Mr. Smith's widow ; and in the end 
 he was beaten by a humiliating majorit}'. There is nothing like 
 the " poor Mr. Smith " system of attack. Aha ! traducer ! Tu 
 quoque: you're another! and the traitor Benedict Arnold used to 
 confess that the accusation, perfectly unfounded, of having once 
 " killed a man in a claret-coloured coat," sometimes lay heavier on 
 his mind than the curses of his country and the blood of Andre. 
 
 It is so seldom, nowadays, that I allow myself a good hearty 
 digression, that having once begun, I thought it as well to proceed 
 until you were exasperated, and I was satiated. This agreeable 
 state of things being, I conclude, attained, I will return to In- 
 spector Millament and Sergeant South, promising not to digress 
 again for a great many chapters. 
 
 A word as to the personal appearance of the Inspector. He
 
 328 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 •R-as talJ, like his attendant Sergeant, but he had long since given 
 up all youthful vanities in attire. Inspector Millainent assuired 
 the imposing, the paternal, the venerable. He was stately in 
 mien, of a grave countenance, rubicund, but abundant in white 
 hair and whiskers, almost approaching the full beard. He wore a 
 broad-brimmed hat and gold-rimmed spectacles. His manly chest 
 was covered by a black-velvet waistcoat of comfortable, but austere 
 cut. He wore gaiters. He was never seen without an umbrella 
 with a crutched handle. From one of his side-pockets usually 
 bulged a packet of his adored periodicals. There was about him 
 an indefinable combination of the "heavy father" in a comedy 
 and a retired military officer in real life. 
 
 Both Inspector Millament and Sergeant South were married. 
 They had pretty little cottages at Camberwell, and were as close 
 neighbours as they were close friends. At home they smoked 
 their pipes and drank their social glass ; and read — the Inspector 
 his continuous romances, and the Sergeant the theatrical adver- 
 tisements, in default of playbills — in peace and comfort. Both 
 had large families ; and it may be mentioned as a somewhat 
 curious feature in their respective domesticities, that neither Mrs, 
 Inspector Millament nor Sirs. Sergeant South ever made the 
 slightest disturbance if the liege lord of one or the other stopped 
 out until the unholiest hours in the night-morning, or, leaving 
 home for a quiet stroll, didn't come back again for a fortnight. 
 They were quite accustomed to such vagaries. 
 
 Millament without South, or South without Millament, would 
 have been trustworthy and efficient officers, I have no doubt ; but 
 they were seldom seen asunder. They liunted much better to- 
 gether. The newspapers always associated their names ; uay^ 
 police-magistrates experienced a kind of pleasure when they were 
 told that such or such an important case was under the manage- 
 ment of Inspector Millament and Sergeant South. 
 
 It was about half-after one p.m. on the day when the dis- 
 tinguished party visited the Monmoutli Chambers that the In- 
 spector and his colleague were sauntering by the northern 
 approach to "Waterloo Bridge. There were plenty of announce- 
 ments relative to entertainments, ^;os(?-s plastiques, and theatrical 
 novelties for the Sergeant to peruse ; and there was apparently
 
 >'emeSis in plain clothes. 329 
 
 plenty of leisure for the Inspector to finish the last chapter of 
 "Amy Montmorenci, or the Odd-rdlow's Niece." The day was 
 delightful ; everything wore a clieerful and sunshiny aspect, and 
 the people who passed to and fro glanced approvingly at the two 
 friends, douhtless thinking them a very nice pair of gentlemen 
 indeed. As, indeed, they were. 
 
 "It don't finish well, South, and that's a fact," the Inspector 
 remarked, shutting up "Amy Montmorenci," and replacing the 
 periodical in his pocket. " She ought to have come into the 
 fortune in her own right, instead of marrying that lily-livered son 
 of a gun who was made out to he an earl." 
 
 " That way of finishing it would never have done for the 'Vie.,' '' 
 mused the Sergeant, intent on a playbill. " The women ought 
 always to have the best of it. Virtue rewarded, and that sort of 
 thing. Halloa ! he.''e's the lu'ench Plays a-comiug." 
 
 There was no bill of Mr. JMitchell's (then) charming little 
 theatre near; but Inspector Millament seemed perfectly well to 
 understand what was meant by the " French Plays." 
 
 " On to the bridge," he said quickly to his subordinate, and 
 passed through the turnstile. 
 
 The collector who took his halfpenny and that of Sergeant 
 South gave a respectful grin as they went througli, and remarked 
 subsequently to a youth, with a face like a muffin and a cap like 
 a crumpet, who assisted him in his fiscal duties, that " there was 
 something up." Many a time had the toll-collector seen Inspector 
 Millament and Sergeant South pass through his wicket, until at 
 last he seemed to have almost an intuitive knowledge of when 
 they were going quietly to their own homes, and when " tliere was 
 something up." 
 
 The two sauntered along the bridge ; the Inspector taking a 
 smiling survey of Somerset House, the Sergeant gazing with 
 rapt attention, first at the shot-tower, and then at the lion on the 
 summit of the brewery on the Surrey side. Then both faced 
 about and stood still. 
 
 There came towards them from Middlesex a gentleman of gay 
 and jaunty carriage, and attired in the first style of fashion. 
 I say in the first style of fashion ; for his raiment was spleudid 
 and well cut ; his hat was shiny, and his boots were bright.
 
 330 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 His linen was of the finest and whitest. He had many chains 
 and many rings, and curious to relate, he wore his heart upon 
 his sleere. 
 
 " "What swells they do come out to be sure, sometimes," 
 Sergeant South remarked, half in admiration, half in disparage- 
 ment. " I've seen that chap as seedy as a scarecrow." 
 
 " A theatrical lot, South, a theatrical lot," returned his supe- 
 rior; "no ofience to you, though," he added, as though he feared 
 the Sergeant might take the remark as a reflection on his liking 
 for playbill literature. " There's no man admires the drama more 
 than I do. South. But they're always acting a i^art, those 
 Frenchmen ; and there's no denying it. Look at that French 
 count iu Love and Iladness. Makes use of his whiskers and 
 braiding to betray a poor trusting widow- woman. They're all alike." 
 
 "The last part I saw him acting," the Sergeant said with a 
 grin, " was one where clean linen wasn't wanted." 
 
 " They are slovenly," acquiesced the Inspector. " They've no 
 notion of the neat and quiet in apparel : the real Old English 
 Gentleman cut," and he glanced approvingly at his black-velvet 
 waistcoat and gaiters. " But they're a knowing lot, South — 
 a shrewd, a very shrewd and artful lot I can assure you." 
 
 The bravely-attired gentleman who wore his heart upon his 
 sleeve rapidly neared them. He was, to all seeming, iu the best 
 of spirits, and sang a little song, of which the refrain was, 
 
 " Eh, vive le Roi, et Simon Lefranc, 
 Son favori, son favori !" 
 
 "There's a deal in tliat way he has of singing," the Sergeant 
 whispered, enticingly but approvingly. 
 
 "It does carry things off; but it's too stagy for me," was the 
 Inspector's verdict. " But here he is. Ah, Monsieur Lefranc, 
 good morning to you." 
 
 M. Simon Lefranc, no longer a commercial traveller in diffi- 
 culties, but a dandy of the very first water, was enchanted, 
 ravished, to behold his dear friends. He pressed both their 
 hands warmly. He longed for the day when he could enjoy, 
 more at his ease, the pleasure of their society. But business 
 must be attended to. "At all events," he added, " we shall have 
 a charming day to-morrow at the races."
 
 KEMESIS IN FLAIX CLOTHES. 331 
 
 "Yes; it's likely enough to be fine, Monsieur," said the 
 Inspector, " and there'll be plenty of enjoyment on the road and 
 on the course. But we'll all get our hands full of business, 
 I think, to-morrow ; eh. South ? " he concluded, turning to his 
 companion. 
 
 " Chock-fall," replied the Sergeant; "so has Monsieur Lefranc 
 there." 
 
 " Bah ! a trifle ! a mere bagatelle ! My little affair might have 
 been over an hour ago. I could have caged my bird before noon, 
 but we had agreed to wait, and for certain reasons to strike all 
 our coups together. She is certain to bo at the races, you 
 say?" 
 
 "As sure as eggs is eggs," the Sergeant conclusively re- 
 sponded. " She won't miss, nor any of our birds either. Besides, 
 they'll all be well watched during the night. Tou've got all the 
 papers?" 
 
 "Everything. "Warrant of extradition. All complete." 
 
 " Is there anything else, Monsieur Lefranc ? unless, indeed, 
 you'd like to take a pint of wine," asked Inspector Millament. 
 
 " There is nothing else ; and a million thanks for your hos- 
 pitable offer; but I am engaged to lunch at Long's Hotel at 
 two." 
 
 "Then we won't detain you. My mate and I have a little 
 business down the Cut, and shall be at it all the afternoon : 
 you'll be down the Yard, I suppose, to-night ? The Commissioner 
 may wish to see you." 
 
 "I shall be there at ten o'clock precisely. I have a little 
 document to get signed." 
 
 " Perhaps," continued the hospitable Inspector, " you'll be 
 able to spare an hour ; and we'll go and hear a song, and take a 
 quiet tumbler and a cigar. If not, our appointment stands for 
 to-morrow ; three o'clock in front of the Grand Stand. Soutli 
 and I are coming down by the rail early. You're going to do 
 the road, I presume ? " 
 
 " Precisely ; I am about to intrust my person to a barouche 
 and four." 
 
 " Ah, nobody knows you," the Inspector said, with something 
 like a sigh ; " I daren't be seen even on the roof of a four-horse
 
 332 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 omnibus. Everybody would say, ' There goes Inspector Milla- 
 ment. I wonder wbat he's after.' South and I are obliged to 
 slink down by rail and prowl about as though we had something 
 to be ashamed of." 
 
 " Qui ft Mcecenas, ut nemo — " AVell, who is contented with 
 his lot ? Inspector Millament was the most famous thief-catcher 
 in Eugland, feared and deferred to, and trembled at. And yet 
 even lie could find something to grumble about. 
 
 " One word," Sergeant South said, as the Frenchman, lifting 
 his hat, was about to retrace his steps northward. " We've been 
 wautiu"" this woman for months. Have wanted her for a dozen 
 little transportable matters ; but she's always had the art to talk 
 the prosecutors over before an information was sworn. She's 
 slipped through our fingers twenty times. Do you reall}' think 
 that she will be nailed on your little matter ? " 
 
 " I am sure of it. In France we do not let our little birds 
 escape so easily. I have a treble-barrelled gun for her. Do you 
 know what kind of bullets they carry ? " 
 
 " I can just guess," answered Sergeant South. 
 
 " Number one, faux en ecritures privces, — Forgery. Number 
 two, complicity in a vol avec effraction, — Burglary. Number 
 three, assassiiiat, — murdee." 
 
 " By Jove ! " exclaimed the ordinarily equable Inspector IMilla- 
 ment, whilst Sergeant South uttered a prolonged whistle. 
 
 " Tes, I think that pretty little mouth may cracJier dans le 
 son, grin in sawdust yet. We have her, hard and fast. Do you 
 know a man named Sims ? " he added rapidly. 
 
 " Known him. for years ; very clever, but a bad lot," replied 
 the Inspector. 
 
 " Is he an accomplice ? " asked the Sergeant, eagerly. 
 
 "An accomplice!" echoed the Frenchman, with a look of 
 surprise ; " he's been one of us for years ; but dans la politique : 
 in the State department. This will be a sad blow to my old 
 colleague ; for he was verv fond of our little friend, and tried to 
 prevent her compromising herself so deeply as she has done. 
 Bonjour, mes enfants. A donain.'' 
 
 And so each of these hunters of human kind went on his 
 way.
 
 CPIAPTEK XXVI. 
 
 THE EACE. 
 
 Up, Florence Armytage ! up aud away ! for the liunters are 
 after thee for thy destruction. 
 
 Why does she tarry ? why does she linger ? Eash and despe- 
 rate little -n-onian, the hounds have slipped their leash ; you may 
 almost hear their baying. Tliey ^vill be upon thee presently, and 
 pull thee down, and tear thy throat, and rend thee asunder. The 
 game is up. The last stake has been played. The decree has 
 gone forth. Ely, miserable little woman! There is vet time. 
 Fly ! ^ 
 
 But there was no one by to say this to Florence, and she 
 stayed. AYhat cause had she to ily ? Everything had been 
 going well with her lately. Her last little adventure had suc- 
 ceeded marvellously. The offspring of Tottlepot's caligraphy, 
 planted in a safe quarter, had filled her pocket with hundreds, as 
 it had filled his wth golden units. Ely, indeed ! Do we go on 
 wings to the Races ? 
 
 She came home to her Kniiihtsbridge lod^iufjs about five, verv, 
 very tired, but radiant. She was too fatigued to ride on horse- 
 back, and had a pretty little dinner sent in to her from a neigh- 
 bouring confectioner's. The salmon-cutlet was delicious. There 
 was an exquisite little duck and a trufile, and a morsel of iced 
 ■pudding. The wicked little woman drank a whole pint of 
 Moselle. It did her good, she said. There were times — they 
 were only times of recent date, however — wlien at the conclusion 
 ■of a day's hard campaigning she had been (obliged to take a little 
 cognac ; sometimes with water, sometimes without. She did not 
 want cognac to-day, no, nor the laudanum in her dressing-case. 
 
 " Poison," she said gaily to herself, " poison, indeed. I could 
 get enough of it from papa without ever troubling the chemist for
 
 334 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 it. Poor dear papa, I ought to have gone to see him to-day. 
 I'm afraid he's not so comfortable as he ought to be with that 
 Mi's. Donkin. 
 
 " Papa's is a desperate game," she pursued. " If he succeeds, 
 what a fortune ! if he fails, — ah, I shudder to think of it." And 
 she did shudder. 
 
 She sat toying with the remains of her repast, — it had been 
 followed, of course, by a choice dessert, — until past eighb o'clock. 
 There was yet time for her to fly. She might have caught the 
 mail-train for Dover, and have been at Ostend by morning. She 
 might have caught the great night-mail for the North at Euston 
 Square, and have been at Carlisle by dawn. There were scores of 
 outlets open to her, and there was no one to tell her that the 
 hunters were up, and that the hounds had slipped their leash. 
 She lighted her little cigarette, and sent tiny wreaths of blue 
 smoke circling towards the ceiling. To her they did not look like 
 halters. 
 
 The French maid came in due time, and dressed her in elabo- 
 rate magnificence. She was covered in jewels. Some that she 
 had on were owed for, and some had been gotten from usurers, 
 and some had been stolen. But no matter. A little carriage 
 waited for her, and she drove to the French plays at the St. 
 James's Theatre. 
 
 "What were the performances that evening? 1! Aubercje des 
 Adrets, Vingt Ans de la Vie d'un Joueur ? I forget. Ah, now I 
 remember ; it was La Dame de St. Tropez. She had a little 
 closely-curtained stage-box. She shivered a little at the death- 
 scene, but was soon lierself again, and, returning, stopped the 
 carriage at Yerrey's, and had an ice and a glass of Cura9oa 
 brought out to her. 
 
 She did not go to bed after the play. She went home and had 
 a bath, and the maid dressed her again more elaborately and 
 magnificently than before. But there were certain of her dia- 
 monds, — the most gorgeous among them perhaps, — which she did 
 not put on. She was driven this time but a very short distance. 
 Whereabouts on the confines of Belgravia or Pimlico it was 
 situated is a matter of no present concern. It was a very grand 
 house, lighted up from top to bottom with wax-candles. The
 
 THE RACE. 335 
 
 Baroness despised gas. Tes ; it was a Barouess who ofEciated as 
 hostess : a foreign lady of title, wliosc husband, M. Ic Baron, was 
 grave in appearance, portly in build, and was decorated with the 
 ribbons of many orders. There were many ladies, — none of them 
 so pretty as Florence Armytage, but many young and comely, 
 and many more who could not lay pretensions to extreme youth, 
 but were nevertheless stately and superb. All the toilettes were 
 ravishing; and the diamonds glistened so that you might have 
 imagined the ladies so many walking chandeliers, with the gauze- 
 coverings which careful housewives put about them floating by 
 way of drapery. There were a great many gentlemen, some of 
 them the greatest dandies in London. There was a duke. There 
 were Eussian and Turkish diplomates. The conversation was 
 brilliant, but strictly decorous. Xot even the tiny pinches of 
 Attic salt sometimes permitted by the Lady on the Eirst Floor 
 at her charming reunions in the Rue Grraude-des-Petites-Maisons, 
 Paris, Aveje tolerated here. There was singing and playing, and 
 of the very best description, in one room. There was dancing in 
 another. There was play, and of the very deepest, in another. 
 jSTone of your sixpenny-pointed whist or eighteenpenny vingt-un, 
 but good, sound, ruinous roulette. The Baroness was kind 
 enough to keep the bank ; her stately husband did not disdain to 
 officiate as croupier. How the gold gave out its red glow, and 
 the crisp bank-notes crackled on the green-baize table! How 
 merrily the ball spun round in its parti-coloured wheel ! "With 
 what dulcet tones the Baroness proclaimed the chances of the 
 game ! Florence Armytage was in luck that night. She won 
 two hundred pounds. She sang and danced afterwards, and 
 enchanted everybody. She was taken in to supper by the Duke, 
 and drank more Moselle ; but it was iced, and had a seductive 
 bouquet about it, and it did her good, she said. She reached 
 home at three in the morning, fatigued, but unconquered; and 
 bade her discreet Abigail Avake her at eleven, at which time her 
 own snug little brougham, but with four post-horses attached, was 
 to call and take her to the Downs. And who do you think was 
 to be her cavalier on the occasion ? I dare not tell you yet ; bub 
 you shall hear speedily. 
 
 Yes ; the parties given by the Barouess de la Haute Gueuse
 
 336 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 ■were undeniably splendid, altliougb their locality was certainly in 
 the Debateable Land. They were not like Mrs, Armytage's 
 Parisian soirees. They did not in the least resemble the dull and 
 vulgar, yet pretentious, shams of well-conducted parties, common 
 among the "upper five hundred" of a class I disdain to parti- 
 cularise. The Southbank might have sisfhed as often and as 
 vainly as Queeu Dido in the ballad before she could have obtained 
 a card for the Baroness's parties. The oddest thing about them 
 was that nobody seemed to know exactly where she lived. The 
 great dandies, the gorgeous guardsmen, the foreign diphmates, 
 used to be taken there late at night by other dandies, guardsmen, 
 and diphmates, who, in their turn, had been taken there by others. 
 Tou used to wake late the next morning with a headache, and a 
 misty consciousness of having had a very good supper over- 
 night, and had rather too much champagne. Tou had seen a 
 multitude of wax-candles and many jewels. Tou had been 
 permitted at one stage of the entertainment to smoke. Perhaps 
 you found a white camellia or a lady's glove in your pocket. It 
 was as though you had been to see the Adelantado of the Seven 
 Cities whom "Washington Irving discourses of so sweetly : the 
 only drawbacks to the pleasurable reminiscences of the evening 
 were that champagne-headache and the discovery that you had 
 lost all the money you had about you. Generally you found a 
 cabman's ticket in lieu of jouv port-monnaie. The cabman would 
 call for his fare about noon, demanding seven-and-sixpence ; and 
 in answer to your inquiries would politely inform you that you 
 and another gentleman had hailed him at Hyde-Park Corner, 
 whence you were driven, at your own request, to Paddington 
 Green, where the other gentleman alighted, and so you had been 
 driven eventually home. Tou paid the cabman, but you never 
 saw that other gentleman again. 
 
 It would have been well for Florence Armytage if she, too, had 
 been driven to Paddington, and to the terminus of the Great 
 ■\Yestern Eailway, and had so taken train anywhere away from 
 the hunters. Of what close and narrow chances is Life made up ! 
 But for the merest cliance in the world Mr. Sims might have 
 dropped in at the Baroness's — where lie was very well known — 
 and there met not only Mrs. Armytage, but a gentleman of
 
 THE RACE. 337 
 
 cheerful guise and jocund conversation, who, as a strange adjunct 
 to full evening-costume, wore his heart upon his sleeve. Oh! 
 Simon Lefranc was there ; and Florence was introduced to him. 
 He was Count Somebody, and wore a full moustache and whisker 
 and a curly black wig ; and the little woman thought him very 
 droll, and did not in the least recognise him as the impudent- 
 looking person with a face like that of a paillasse, who had stared 
 at her that morning through the coffee-room window of the Soho 
 Chambers. 
 
 The Eace on the Downs that May-day was the most brilliant 
 that had ever been seen for years. The sun shone glaring hot, 
 and the dust was somewhat choking ; but summer toilettes and 
 parasols will defy the sun, and lobster-salads and iced drinks will 
 allay the dust. There were more things which took place at this 
 particular Eace than had been known to occur for many years. 
 "Teddy the Tyler" was the horse that won the great stake ; but 
 the events that accompanied his progress to the judge's chair are 
 of too much importance to be dismissed at the fag-end of a 
 chapter. If you please, we will let "Teddy the Tyler," and the 
 champagne, and the lobsters wait a little. Yery shortly you 
 shall have a correct card of the entire proceedings. 
 
 Three gentlemen had to meet by appointment at the Grand 
 Stand at three p.m. The police were rapidly clearing the course,. 
 in their admired broom-like fashion, about that time ; for " Teddy 
 the Tyler," with his three-and-twenty competitors, were all 
 saddled and bridled, and Teddy the Tyler's jockey, with Ids three- 
 and-twenty competitors, had all received their last instructions 
 from their trainers and owners. The superintendent of police, 
 who was directing the clearing of the course, gave a friendly nod 
 as be passed the three gentlemen, who, too discreet to interfere 
 with the discipline of the day, were retiring from the course. 
 
 " Pleasure or business ? " asked the Superintendent, leaning 
 over his saddle-bow. 
 
 " A little of both," answered Inspector Millament ; " more of 
 the former, perhaps." 
 
 " Lots of tip-top swells here," remarked Sergeant South. 
 
 " Evervbodf . Sir Jasper Goldthorpe and party just driven on 
 to the Hill. His son the captain's betting away in the ring like 
 
 z
 
 338 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 mad. Friend of yours ? " and the Superintendent indicated with 
 a wave of his whip Simon Lefrane, who, with his heart pinned to 
 the sleeve of a gauzy coat, constructed expressly " for the races," 
 was standing a little apart. 
 
 " French — just come across," the Inspector returned in a hasty 
 whisper. " Deuce of a heavy job. Murder. One of their best 
 men. Good bye." 
 
 So the course was cleared, and, after many false starts, the race 
 was run, " Teddy the Tyler" winning by a neck. 
 
 " My horse ! my horse! " cried little Mrs. Armytage, in great 
 glee, from her carriage-window. She was not the owner of the 
 animal ; but she liad backed him heavily, and stood to win a good 
 deal of monev. 
 
 How lucky Florence Armytage had been that week, to be 
 sure !
 
 CHAPTEK XXVII. 
 
 AriEE THE KACE. 
 
 A:sD the Tower of Babel, Messieurs Essayists and Reviewers. 
 Is that an Allegory? is that to be taken "ideologically?" 
 Granted that it is to be so accepted, let us allegorise and idealise 
 it, here, upon the Downs. 
 
 Yonder is the Tower of Babel, there, the Grand Stand. But 
 for the infirm and impotent purpose of Man it would have mounted 
 higher, higher, and higher, until it had soared miles beyond the 
 altitude ever attained by the carrier-pigeons liberated each race- 
 day from the summit, with the news of the great Event tied under 
 their wings. But a term was to be put to Babel, and the Builder 
 stayed his hand, and then all around arose the confusion of 
 tongues. 
 
 The myriad-langued brabble had ceased at the starting ; and 
 respiration paused in a hundred thousand pair of lungs as the 
 horses came round the Corner. He who stood at the end of the 
 Stand nearest the Judge's chair, and looked at the hive of heads 
 upon it, saw but a mass of black ; when by came the horses, and 
 forthwith the black ant-hill turned pallid white, as the mass of 
 faces, blanched with anxiety, were turned towards the goal. Then 
 Teddy the Tyler came out of a squad of three that had long since 
 abandoned the rest, and leaving Shandrydan to admire his tail, 
 and beating Brother to Desdichado by a neck cleverly, came in 
 triumphantly, and won the Eace. 
 
 I often wonder what the last jockey on tlie last horse thinks 
 about as the turf gives out sullen echoes to the hoofs of his la^cino' 
 steed. Do hopes of "better luck next time" encourage him 
 under defeat, or did he never mean to win the race at all ? Some- 
 body must be last, of course ; somebody must be beaten. "What 
 
 z 2
 
 340 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 did the last cuirassier escorting Napoleon from the lost field of 
 "Waterloo towards Genappe think about ? " Here is a pretty- 
 piece of business. It is all over with the Chief— ^7ii with the 
 Little Corporal. Shall we ever get to Genappe ? Shall I be 
 sabred by the Prussians, or taken prisoner by the Eosbifs ? Shall 
 I ever see Fanchon again, or the Champs Elysees, or drink petit 
 ileu at the Barrier, or get admitted to the Invalides if I lose my 
 leg?" Thus may run the thoughts coursing through such a 
 trooper's mind ! and yet just as probably he may be like " the 
 jolly young waterman," not rowing but riding along, "thinking 
 of nothing at all." A great power, that temporary but complete 
 suspension of thought ! Perhaps the last jockey in the race can 
 so give himself a mental holiday. I have often noticed a vacuous 
 and abstracted expression beneath the velvet or parti-coloured 
 cap. AVhat does it matter, after all ? He has lost the blue 
 ribbon of the turf, but he may win some gaudy little bit of tape 
 at Northampton or Goodwood. He is young yet. There are 
 plenty of gentlemen who will give him a mount ; meanwhile he 
 rides and thinks not, unless indeed he has sold the race, and 
 "pulled" his steed at some knave's bidding; and then he may be 
 half-chuckling in his silken sleeve to think that it is lined with 
 bank-notes, and half-apprehensive of the Vehmgericht of the 
 Jockey Club, with their " cord-and-dagger " decrees of suspension 
 or expulsion from the ring and turf; or else he maybe a mere 
 child, as many jockeys are, who has ridden carelessly or clumsily, 
 and dreads fierce reprehension, or fiercer double-thonging, when 
 he returns to the training-stable. The confusion of tongues, 
 stilled at the starting, surging again as the hoi-ses swept a'nayr 
 hushed again at the critical turn of the Corner, breaking into a 
 delirious dropping-fire of "It is!" "It isn't!" "Eed wins!" 
 " Tellow wins ! " " Hurrah for Blue-cap ! " " Lord Punter's horse 
 •wins ! " " I'll bet against the Tyler ! " — now, when the event was 
 decided, burst into a huge frenzy of howling, yelling, cheering, 
 bawling, screaming, cursing, laughing, screeching, hooting, yelp- 
 ing, and general mad gabbling and turmoil. And the Ring, all 
 whose thoughts a moment before had been centered on this race, 
 forthwith began to speculate on the race for the ensuing year, 
 and back Teddy the Tyler for the Leger.
 
 AFTER THE EACE. .'34 1 
 
 Inspector Millament, liis Sergeant, und his French friend, 
 seemed in no kind of hurry to get through their little business. 
 
 " There's plenty of time," the Inspector remarked, quietly. 
 
 "Let 'em have their lunch," &aid the Sergeant, with a grin. 
 
 "With all my heart," acquiesced the genial Simon Lefranc- 
 ■" We too uill lunch, and eat of the saJade dio liomard, and sahler 
 the petit vin mousseux.^' 
 
 They kept their eyes open, however. From ten minutes to ten 
 minutes people passed them, who had a sign of intelligence to give, 
 a word of intelligence to whisper. jN'ow it was a hot hostler hur- 
 rying by, with a wisp of straw and a pail of water. Now a little 
 ragamuffin, bawling forth the correctness of race-cards of the 
 year before last. Now a monstrously attired Ethiopian serenader, 
 v\-ith his "Welsh wig all awry, and the blackening streaming off his 
 pockmarked face with heat. Now came a trampish woman with 
 a tambourine, but also with a nod and a wink for Sergeant South. 
 Now a remarkably dingy foreign gentleman, seemingly of the in- 
 terpreting persuasion from Leicester Square, who carelessly flung 
 a half-burnt cigar on the turf, — no sooner flung than picked up 
 by Simon Lefranc. 
 
 "Tou do not manage your agents well in England," the volatile 
 Simon remarked ; " I observe that you let them speak to you. I 
 never let mine say a word. Tenez, this bit of cigar is a whole 
 phrase to me." 
 
 " We're not so clever at the deaf-and-dumb language, maybe, as 
 you are," retorted Sergeant South, somewhat nettled. 
 
 "That isn't it," interposed the pacific Inspector Millament; 
 "our men are so confoundedly free and independent. We're 
 obliged to pick 'em up where we can, and they will have their own 
 way. Tou liave 'em all under your conti'ol. We haven't. Our 
 Government's dreadfully shabby to the Force, and it's as much as 
 we can do to make both ends meet." 
 
 " There may be something in that," remarked Simon Lefranc, 
 reflectively. " That's one of your constitutional weaknesses. 
 (Jhez nous on a carte blancJie" 
 
 " And then, you see," continued the Inspector, " whenever one 
 of these gentry has got rather clever in picking iip information, 
 and has done us a good turn in a pretty stiffish case or two, what
 
 3i2 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 does he do but set up iu business for himself, and start a ' private 
 inquiry ' office, to set genteel families by the ears, and rip up all 
 the secrets of tlie first nobility of the land. I've no patience 
 with 'em." 
 
 "Nor I," the accommodating M. Lefranc agreed. "Nor would 
 I, nor would M. le Prefet. Peste ! we suffer no amateurs in our 
 vocation. Ilfaut etre a nous corps et ame, sinon ojt va la d'ou Von 
 vient. By which I mean, my friends," he continued, "that we 
 know a little too much about our assistants ; and that if they 
 play us any little tricks, we send them back to where we took 
 them from. Tou understand, eh ? " 
 
 "I wonder where he came from, at the first going off," whis- 
 pered Sergeant South to his superior. "He can't be under fifty. 
 He must have seen a lot, and have been in a lot of queer places ; 
 ay, and done a lot of queer things iu his time. I should like to 
 know where he learnt to speak English so well." 
 
 " Hush," the inspector returned, just with a movement of an 
 eyelid, sufficient to indicate the near neighbourhood of Simon 
 Lefranc, who, wearing his heart upon his sleeve, according to 
 custom, seemed likewise to have eyes in his coat-back and in his 
 boot-heels, and to see laterally, and dorsally, and obliquely, and 
 everywhere. 
 
 None of the three gentlemen had tickets for the Grand Stand ; 
 but they ail passed unquestioned in and out of the enclosure, and 
 up and down the staircase of that Tower of Babel. Their 
 business was at present iu the midst of the confusion of tongues 
 in the Eing. 
 
 A strange and edifying sight that enclosure and its occupants 
 were to see. A more marvellous one was that King, — not to be 
 equalled in any country but our own, — without a parallel in any 
 age of civilisation but the present one. Simon Lefranc looked 
 upon all he saw with a calmly critical eye, and in contemptuous 
 disparagement thought on what comparatively lean and barren 
 sights Chantilly and other Continental race-courses presented. 
 An Englishman, even, familiar with the thousand and one 
 " events " with which our racing calendar teems, must have 
 been fain to acknowledge that these Downs, this Enclosure, this 
 E,ing, were unequalled in his experience, and iu the world.
 
 AFTER THE RACE. 343 
 
 The great tournament was over — gone and done with, to be 
 remembered only gleefully or ruefully on settling day ; to find 
 only its record as the " Teddy the Tyler year " among the fasti 
 of the turf; to be perpetuated only in garish mezzotint engrav- 
 ings, that are framed and hung up in tavern parlours. Well, and 
 is that not fame enough ? Do the great enjoy a much brighter, 
 a much more durable renown when they have passed away to the 
 cold dark house, where you and I, aud all the world, — athletes 
 and paralytics, Adonis and Quasimodo, the Prime Minister and 
 Blondin the tight-rope dancer, — must one day find a home and 
 peace ? Here is a veteran who has filled Europe with his fame, 
 stormed redoubts, planted banners on earthworks, done all the 
 deeds of a Paladin. He has won crosses and orders, titles and 
 a pension. Tears before he dies, the world, which was wont to 
 applaud him so loudly, has quite forgotten him. His laurels are 
 as withered as the orange-flowers in the chaplet of last year's 
 bride. Nobody cares to inquire who that feeble old gentleman in 
 the blue frock aud bufi" waistcoat may be, who hobbles from his 
 lodgings in St. Alban's place to the United Service Club, and 
 scolds the waiters, and is voted a nuisance in the library because 
 he wheezes aud coughs so. One day he does not come down 
 stairs to breakfast : the undertakers go up stairs to him, instead. 
 His man-servant improves the occasion, and his own particular 
 wardrobe. Somebody puts a distringas upon his balance at the 
 banker's ; sometimes it happens that he has lived so long as not 
 even to leave nephews and nieces to squabble over his heritage. 
 He dies, and they bury him: but for one brief day one paragraph 
 of the military intelligence in the newspapers is illuminated by a 
 flash of his old fame; the laurels bloom once more; again is the 
 trumpet sounded, as we are told that the poor old gentleman 
 deceased was the gallant Sir Hercules Lyon Choker, the hero of — 
 where was it? — Walcheren, Orthes, Nivelle, Ticonderoga? — it 
 might have been the Battle of Blenheim for aught the public 
 care about it twenty-four hours afterwards ; — the intrepid 
 General, whose first commission bore date January 1st, 1787; 
 who was all through the Peninsular "War ; who was at Washing- 
 ton, and only missed Waterloo through his services being required 
 on the other side of the Atlantic. He was a K.C.B., he was a
 
 344 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 General, he was a Colonel of the Fifth Toughs ; and so h-e ends : 
 and this is Fame. 
 
 The three police-ofEcers, too, this race-day, were elbowing their 
 way through a compact mass of fame. Even they, thief-catchers 
 as they were, had a kind of celebrity, and felt proud of it. ]S'ow 
 and then Inspector Millament and Sergeant South were recog- 
 nised by some wary turhte, by some experienced man about town, 
 who would thrust his tongue in his cheek, and chuckle, and 
 say, unconsciously echoing the toll-taker on the bridge in 
 Londou, " There they go — on the hunt, as usual ; I wonder 
 what's up." 
 
 Hound and about they elbowed their way. Deeper and deeper 
 they plunged into the great cauldron wherein seethed the children 
 of Mammon; South and Millament pi-oceediug with a calm 
 and practised motion of the arms, and even M. Lefranc in- 
 sinuating his way along in a mauner which seemed to argue 
 that he thoroughly understood the ins and outs of an English 
 crowd. 
 
 " There's his Lordship," muttered the inspector to his com- 
 panions ; " he looks first-rate to-day." 
 
 His Lordship was apparent but for a moment. Anon he was 
 surrounded by other lordships, and disappeared. He Avas a 
 nobleman full fifty years of age, and wrinkled and grey, and 
 plainly dressed ; and yet, gazing upon him for the first time in 
 your life, jou might at once have made an affidavit that this was 
 one of the proudest patricians in England. He looked his Lord- 
 ship ail over. There was an indescribable distance, reserve, and 
 morgue, an almost sneering, almost spiteful expression of pride in 
 his Lordship's lace, which gave him a very unlovely, but a very 
 aristocratic expression. A plain frock, a black satin stock of the 
 fashion Avorn five-and-twenty years ago, and pepper-and-salt 
 trousers very quaintly cut about the boot, are not, surely, very 
 sumptuous articles of attire; yet had his Lordship worn an 
 embroidered surcoat on his noble breast, and a damascened 
 morion with a plume of feathers, and gauntlets of silver, and 
 greaves of gold, and a tremendous coat-of-arms blazoned on his 
 shining shield, he could not have looked one whit more or less the 
 true patrician than in the simple garb I have described. This was his
 
 AFTER THE RACE. 345 
 
 Lordsliip, eloquent in debate, sage in council, generous, albeit 
 imperious, among his vassals, learned and "witty, and pungent and 
 ill-tempered, and very fond of horseflesh. 
 
 " He's not a bad sort," Sergeant South opined ; " but he can't 
 win the blue ribbon of the turf for all his trying." 
 
 His Lordship ! "^vhy, half the peerage found representatives in 
 or about the Grand Stand that memorable day when Teddy the 
 Tyler won. There were plump old lords very tightly braced and 
 girthed up, very stiff about the neckerchief, very shiny about the 
 hat, very rosy, and sometimes slightly purple about their pendulous 
 cheeks : — ^^joUy old patricians ! how many races had they seen, long 
 before railways were dreamt of, and when the course was kept 
 clear by smock-frocked rustics, temporarily sworn in as special 
 constables, and armed with cartwhips, instead of being swept by 
 that long irresistible blue broom of the Metropolitan Police ; 
 when there was open and undisturbed gambling in all the booths 
 instead of here and there a little furtive, cowering, timorous 
 thimblerigging and cardsharping, and half a dozen stand-up fights, 
 if not more, between every race ! Then there were middle-aged 
 noblemen, inclined, in general, to look somewhat seriously and 
 disparagingly at mundane amusements, especially at those in whicb 
 the lower classes of society were permitted to mingle, but who 
 had somehow found themselves in the Grand Stand inclosure early 
 in the afternoon, — as they had similarly found themselves any 
 time these twenty years past, — with the carriages containing their 
 families, their retainers, and their Fortnum-and-Mason hampers 
 on the Hill opposite. The old lords and the middle-aged lords, 
 and the tall, severe-looking baronets with the white hats and the 
 pendent whiskers, and the stalwart gentlemen in body-coats and 
 drab cords, who bore the appearance of being members for the 
 county, or chairmen of Quarter-sessions, and who, very probably, 
 were entitled to such high styles and dignities, had nothing what- 
 ever to do with the rude, hectoring, betting fraternity — oh dear, 
 no ! If ever they were seen down Tattersall's Yard, say on a 
 Sunday afternoon towards the close of the merry month of May, 
 it was merely for a saunter before dinner. They wouldn't bet on 
 a week-day even, to say nothing of the Sabbath they were so 
 fond, in Parliament and elsewhere, of making laws about : — alwaya
 
 346 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 for the better preservation of that holy day, and the coercion (for 
 their soul's health) of the wicked worldlings of the lower classes. 
 They only attended the leadmg races through an unfeigned love 
 for national sports, and a laudably patriotic desire to improve the 
 breed of the British racer. Most meritorious gentlemen, had they 
 not their desire ! Had they not so improved horse-racing that the 
 animal itself has come to be a kind of four-legged acrobat, a tight- 
 rope dancer with a mane and tail,— a quadruped so precious as to 
 be sometimes the joint-stock property of a company of speculators, 
 — so precious, that a cold in the head or a pebble in the hoof is a 
 ten thousand pound matter,— so precious, that police-guards and 
 detectives have to be kept in his stable to prevent his being 
 "nobbled," or poisoned, or maimed by other ardently patriotic 
 improvers of the breed of British racers, only a little too anxious 
 that some other horse, and not the particular racer in question, 
 should win tlie day f Had they not improved it until a thousand 
 and one ruses, stratagems, intrigues, frauds, and bedevilments 
 have come to environ one of the simplest operations in equine 
 nature,— that of a horse going as fast as his legs will carry or his 
 rider can compel him ? Had they not improved it till jockeys 
 have dwindled and dwindled from strong men into little weazened 
 brats of children, riding " feather-weight," forsooth, till the wind 
 almost blows them from their saddles to dash them against the 
 posts on the course ? Had they not improved it till the whole 
 Turf has become one huge arena of knavery and villany and 
 common cheating, the vantage-ground of shameless rascals who 
 no longer sleeve cards or cog dice, because the law has left no 
 common gaming-houses for them to play the Greek in ? 
 
 These worthy gentlemen, I say, never betted. They left the 
 odds to the professedly sporting aristocracy and gentry, who made 
 no secret of their propensity, and carried their betting-books in 
 their hands as openly as Simon Lefranc wore his heart upon his 
 sleeve ; but they heard something from time to time about large 
 bets that were made, about thousands that were won and lost by 
 persons very intimately known to them,— their own mothers' sons 
 indeed. " Commission" did it all. Stealthy Mr. Wriggles, trust- 
 worthy Mr. Wraggles, confidential Mr. Baggies, the great com- 
 mission agents of the Eing, knew how much to put on Cantharides
 
 AFTER THE RACE. 347 
 
 for Lord Lofty, liow much to lay against Bloodsucker for Lord 
 Wliitechokerly, how much Sir Johu stood to win on the Ascot 
 Cup. AVriggles, "VVraggles, and Baggies never knew their patrons 
 in public. They called very early iu the morning, and were sup- 
 posed to have something to do with the estates, or the tenantry, 
 or the drains down in the country. They were to be seen at 
 private houses of call. Had you met them in public, and not been 
 one of the thoroughly initiated, you would not have been able to 
 recognise them as having anything to do with the Eiug. AVriggles 
 affected the clerical in his appeax-ance ; Wraggles' aspect partook 
 half of the schoolmaster and half of the well-to-do tradesman; 
 and Baggies positively dressed and looked like a gentleman, and 
 was more than ninety-five per cent, of one. Commission is a great 
 power in the state : hidden, undemonstrative, but not the less 
 potent. The Archbishop of Canterbury might bet on commission ; 
 and in the ordinary course of his affairs, no human being would 
 be the wiser for his Grace's transactions. Occasionally, it must 
 be admitted, the occult arcana of commission are opened up, and 
 a great exposure takes place. Then, when Sir John has blown his 
 brains out, it is whispered that the trigger of his gun did not catch 
 in a button-hole while he was out shooting, but that he killed 
 himself because he could not pay his losses on the Derby. Thus, 
 when my Lord levants and the bailiffs go down as unbidden guests 
 to his country-seat, it is rumoured that he has lost many thousands 
 on the St. Leger : — he was never seen to book a bet in his life. 
 
 Leave we these devotees of dark and crooked ways, to whom 
 the sport of horse-racing has lost its zest and savour, these ten 
 years past, and to whom the turf is only another board of green 
 cloth, on which the hoofs of horses, in lieu of ivory dice, are 
 rattled. There is plenty more matter for observation as we 
 wander about. Here, in brilliant, noisy knots, are the young 
 fledglings of turf gambling, the wild young lords, the "noble 
 captains," — so called by runners and touts and doorkeepers, — the 
 sporting Guardsmen, the smooth-faced young subalterns in infantry 
 regiments, sometimes, who are wasting their patrimony, or ruining 
 the clergymen, their papas — ruining them in the military clubs 
 and worse places, and whose lives, when they can scamper up from 
 Aldershott, are made up of betting, soda-and-brandy guzzling, bill-
 
 S48 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 discounters, cliamber-Launting, lobsters, oysters, late hours and 
 loose corapany, and who wake up some morning to be arrested on 
 parade, to become the cynosure of the Insolvent Court and the 
 theme of the newspapers, and who, having begun as fools, often 
 end as rogues, fade away into Continental billiard-rooms and talle 
 dilutes, and seduce other fools in their turn. Given a subaltern's 
 pay in a marching regiment, to find the means of living at the 
 rate of two thousand a year. This is the problem many gallant, 
 and at first well-meaning youths have to solve : — with what ruinous, 
 despairful results, let clergymen with sequestered livings, let sisters 
 robbed of their portions, let defrauded tailors, and usurers frantic 
 at being " done," — " by such a good man, too, as everybody thought 
 him," wheezes Ephraim Tigg the Easper, — let swindled hotel- 
 keepers and billiard-markers with tremendous scores unpaid, essay 
 to tell. 
 
 Shall not a place be found, too, for the sporting Grovernment 
 clerks, and stockbrokers, and rich young tradesmen, just a step 
 lower in the hierarchy of " swelldom," who are at all the races, 
 and bet, and drink, and " carry on," as the phrase is, but who 
 seldom come to such desperate grief as their more aristocratic 
 competitors, for the simple reason that they have not so far to 
 fall, and have a way of letting the mud into which they have 
 fallen dry, and then rubbing it off" with a will? Many more 
 young sparks of the sporting Avorld might I descant upon ; 
 but they are cheaper swells : they don't patronise the Grand 
 Stand ; they come down by the rail, and not in four-in-hands, or 
 even Hansom cabs ; and their losses and winnings are on a scale 
 not at all pretentious. 
 
 But there must not be passed over a variety of the genuine 
 *' swell " tribe, — noble in birth often, generally affluent, at least, 
 in means, — the only remnant we possess, in this hard-working 
 age, — when almost every man, high or low, prince or peasant, 
 does sometJiing, whether it be for good or evil, — of the " dandies " 
 of bygone times. They are growing rarer every day, like that 
 intolerable old (and young) nuisance, — the "gent," who has 
 been all but absorbed by the Volunteer Movement; but you 
 may still see the perfectly listless, do-nothing, care-for-nothing — I 
 trust not good-for-nothing : and yet what is he good for ? —
 
 APTER THE RACE. 3i9 
 
 dandy in tlie Grand Stand on a great race day. He is always 
 exquisitely dressed ; bis hair and appendages are marvels of True- 
 fitism. His jewellery is resplendent ; bis linen irreproacbable. 
 He carries, wet or dry, a slim umbrella. Mr. John Leech has 
 drawn him in Puncli five hundred times. I wish that he could 
 fix him to a wood-block, so that he pervaded society no longer. 
 He smokes as he talks, in a languid, drawling kind of way, and 
 wastes half of his weeds, as he^wastes half of his words. He never 
 knows what to do with his legs. He does know what to do with 
 his hands, and thrusts them, nearly up to the elbows, into his 
 pockets. He comes to the " races " in the most elaborate equi- 
 page and costume attainable, simply because it is " the thing." 
 He does not bet. It is a bore to bet. The men in his set don't 
 bet. He is quite unsusceptible to the excitement of the race, 
 and has just completed the leisurely adjustment of his eye-glass 
 by the time the winning horse has passed the post. He does not 
 even take much interest in the brilliant ladies iu the carriages 
 outside, — save to remark to a friend and duplicate that he has 
 seen Baby Molyneux, or Ada Tressilian (jiee Eunt), and that 
 " she looks older." He does not in the least understand the rude 
 witticisms of the road homewards; and at a handful of salt more 
 or less attic being flung at him, returns a look of such calm 
 bewilderment as to disarm the most practised " chalfer." He has 
 been known to take more champagne than was good for him, and 
 to have gone to the length of assuming a false nose at the " Cock" 
 at Sutton ; but he goes to sleep when tipsy : there are always, at 
 least, seven dandies as solemn as he to take care of him, and he 
 comes to no harm. He never comes to any good. The age of 
 this silent, languid dandy is from twenty-five to thirty, I want 
 to know what becomes of him when he reaches middle age, or 
 approaches fogeyism. Does he emigrate ? Does he enlist ? 
 Does he expire from pure inanition ? Does he take heart of 
 grace and hit somebody, or do something, and approve himself 
 a Man ? Even girls who are worth anything don't seem to care 
 much about him, save as a butt to laugh at ; and although I have 
 occasionally seen the languid and listless dandy feebly struggling 
 between billows of crinoline, and carrying a gorgeous church service 
 to and from Belgravian places of worship on Sundays, it is not with
 
 350 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 great frequenc}', I opine, that hia Common Prayer is opened at 
 the Order for the Solemnisation of Matrimony. I fancy that 
 when the dandy does marry, it is to one of those strong-minded 
 British females who are in the habit of trotting their tall, gaunt, 
 melancholy-looking, uncomplaining husbands from one Continental 
 watering-place to another. Ton know the unhappy being I mean. 
 He is a patient and uxorious drudge, an amiable and contented 
 packhorse. He is always in trouble about the luggage. He is 
 the " Monsieur " with whom hotel-keepers are threatened when 
 the bills are exorbitant, and who would pay the bills out of 
 his own private funds for peace and quietness' sake if he had any 
 private funds ; but he hasn't. He gave up all those, years ago, 
 for splendid board and lodging. He takes his wife's children — 
 she has generally been a widow — out a-walking very meekly. He 
 fetches their physic from the pliar made n Anglais, — " Trois graines 
 de pilule hleite, et une dose noire, s'il vous plait ; " and he is as 
 harmless and, perhaps, slightly more useful than of yore. 
 
 Add to the people I have endeavoured to sketch the foreigners 
 who always muster in great force in the Grand Stand and its 
 precincts, and think they are up to their eyes in Ze Sport when 
 they are elbowed and pushed about by the contending crowd. 
 Almost every foreign legation in London has its minister or 
 secretary or attache here, generally got up in the most approved 
 racing style, with white hats and green veils, and diaphanous 
 coats, and white jean boots with varnished tips and spurs, — 
 whether they ride or not, — and white trousers. How is it that 
 we, of all people in the world, should have almost entirely aban- 
 doned the use of those candid nether garments ? Foreigners 
 adhere to them with pleasing persistence ; but, save on board a 
 man-o'-war, who ever sees an Englishman with a pair of white 
 ducks on nowadays ? Easter Sunday used to be the great day 
 for inaugurating their wear; but, of late years, we have had a 
 succession of rainy Easters. That may have something to do with 
 it. Or is it because the great Duke of Wellington, who wore 
 white ducks winter and summer, is no more, and that the fashion 
 has gone out with him ? 
 
 There are the diplomatic foreigners, who have seen races in 
 every town in Europe almost ; and there are the simple sight-
 
 AFTEU THE EACE. 351 
 
 seeing foreigners, who are lost in tlieir amazement at the Babel 
 sight and the Babel sounds ; there are the country gentlemen of 
 the neighbourhood, who really enjoy the race, and take a genuine 
 interest in the " improvement of the racer." There would be a 
 good many more members of the swell-mob on the look-out for 
 gold watches, dropped pencil-cases, bank-notes, and similar trifles, 
 than are actually present, but that each member of the pocket- 
 picking fraternity is perfectly aware of the Argus-eyed attributes 
 of Inspector Millament, Sergeant South, and sundry other officers 
 of the police force then and there present in plain clothes ; and so 
 the thieves prudently make themselves scarce at the earliest con- 
 venient opportunity. There are the reporters of the sporting 
 ncAvspapers, flitting in and out, rushing from pillar to post, and 
 from post to paddock, and from paddock to Eing, back again, — 
 seeing everything : the weighing, saddling, starting, racing, win- 
 ning, losing, buying, selling, judging, and betting, — passing to 
 and fro unquestioned, quite as well recognised by the officials as 
 the police, and by some almost as much feared, working like 
 galley-slaves in pursuit of their vocation, and delighting in it, 
 moreover. The great owners of race-horses, the solid, serious 
 turfites, the substantial, grave-eyed trainers, are seldom seen, 
 and then but for an instant. They have other and weightier 
 business further afield, where the grass is greener, and the throng 
 is not so dense. 
 
 Ai ! Ai ! — which is an ejaculation I hope will be pardoned to 
 me by the critics, — the hullaballoo, the hue and cry, the frenzied 
 exclamation of the book-makers. They will bet against every- 
 thing : who will lay against the field ? who will back anything ? 
 They will do everything. Bar one ; bar two ; bar three. "What 
 will anybody do on the event ? His Lordship wins ; the Cap- 
 tain wins in a canter. Didn't they say so ? Green wins ; Black 
 wins; Bed wins. The very Fiend himself would seem to be 
 winning to listen to the unearthly screeching of those men. 
 
 Such hot, dusty, streaming, common, knavish, or brutal faces, 
 too ! Now the wolf-type, hungry and savage ; now the fox-type, 
 cunning and cynical, and, the day being warm, of not too sweet a 
 savour ; now the terrier-type, honest enough, but exceeding 
 ravenous after rats. Men— old betting-men — with faces like
 
 352 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 owls, like magpies, like ravens ; not many of the eagle-type, I 
 fancy, save in so far as aquiline noses reacb. Of these, -with the 
 accompaniment of greasy ringlets, pulpy lips, and much glittering 
 jewellery, there is sufficiency, and a little to spare, it may be. 
 And there are weasel faces, ferret faces, grinning-otter faces, 
 hawk faces, bull-dog faces, and hull faces ; but on every human 
 face, among the book-making crew, there is always and ever the 
 unmistakeable stamp and brand of the Gambler, — the nervous 
 tick of the head from side to side, the teeth busy with the lips, 
 the fingers busy with the chin, the unrest in the eye. In a lesser 
 degree, you may see these signs among bargainers in coal and 
 corn marts, among chafferers upon exchanges, among punters at 
 rov.ge-et-noir tables, among bidders at auctions; but for the 
 gambler's look, — V allure de celui quijouegros jeu, — commend me 
 to the book-makers in the Eins:. 
 
 They are of every variety of build and stature, and of all ages ; 
 but they have all gotten their symbol, and have taken Mammon's 
 arles, and are soldiers in his great black-and-yellow regiment. 
 "Whence came they ? From Manchester, Preston, Blackpool, 
 Rochdale, Stockport, Blackburn, — from the great black, striving, 
 working, gaming, spinning, heaving, savage north of England: — 
 many of them, I think, from the dialect in which they yell. The 
 harder, but not harsher, Yorkshire makes itself heard, too, with a 
 vengeance. The unadulterated cockney, showering its " h's " 
 about as from a pepper-castor, is not behindhand ; every province 
 in England seems to have sent a contingent. It is Babel ; but 
 Babel with a universal tongue, concurrent with the confusion 
 thereof, for every one of these money-mongers understands the 
 one primeval language taught by Professor Mammon. 
 
 "What were they ere they took to " making books ? " Did they 
 write them, or keep them, or sell them ? This is a mystery which 
 I, for one, do not pretend to solve ; but I have heard that a man 
 is fit to go into the Eing after he has been a beershop-keeper, a 
 miner in a coal-pit, a railway-porter, a journeyman carpenter, the 
 setter-up in a skittle-alley, the steward of a steamer, a helper in 
 a stable, a prize-fighter, an omnibus-driver, and a gentleman's 
 servant. I have heard that some of these men, the coarsest, 
 commonest of their kind, unable to read or write, scarcely able to
 
 AFl'ER THE RACE. 353 
 
 speak tlieir native tongue, have yet been gifted with powers, or 
 have acquired habits, of mental calcuLitiou which would, if tested, 
 somewhat astonish Mr. Bidder, ex-calculatiug bov, and Mr. 
 Babbage, present constructor of figure-grinding machines, and 
 hater of music-grinding ditto. I have heard that the word of 
 many of these men may be taken for tens of tliousands of pounds, 
 and that, amidst an amount of trickery and roguery — not always 
 among these coarse and common fellows from Lancashire and 
 "Whitechapel — which has brought scandal and discredit on the 
 English turf, there are some who are strictly honest and scrupu- 
 lously honourable : therein setting an example to many refined 
 and many aristocratic frequenters of Tattersall's. 
 
 "They're a queer lot, and that's a fact," Inspector Millament 
 remarked to Sergeant South. " How they do get along without 
 breaking oftener than they do is a wonder to me.'' 
 
 " They do break sometimes, though," the Sergeant said. 
 ^There's too many of 'em. Inspector. My belief is, in horse- 
 racing, that there's more cats than mice for 'm to catch." 
 
 " And when they do break, — when they cannot pay ? " asked 
 Simon Lefranc. 
 
 "AVhy, then they have to go over*yonder," explained the Ser- 
 geant, pointing to an outer Babel beyond the barrier of the Stand, 
 and where multitudes of betting-men, shabbier in attire, but with 
 the same types of face, — oh, the very same types of face, — were 
 exchanging yells of intelligence, and receiving yells back again, 
 and occasionally leaping high in air to catch the eyes of those 
 within the E,ing. 
 
 " They have to go over yonder," said the Sergeant, " and make 
 their bets as they can. It's about our time. Suppose we go out 
 and look at 'em ; and then, if you're agreeable. Inspector and 
 Monsieur, we'll have a little lunch. One of my men has just 
 given me the ofiice, and four o'clock will do very well for our 
 little business. Unless your little party ties herself to the wing 
 of a carrier pigeon, or telegraphs herself to London, she can't 
 very well get away from the eyes that are watching her. This 
 way. Monsieur." 
 
 And so the three went out among the outsiders : each man 
 with the fate of a human being — it may be — in his breast-pocket. 
 
 A A
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 CAUGHT. 
 
 " My horse ! my horse ! " had cried little Mrs. Armytage from 
 her brougham window, as "Teddy the Tyler" won by a neck. 
 Yes ; he was her horse — her favourite — the colt she would win sO' 
 much money by. She could have kissed the jockey, so delighted 
 was she. Miserable little woman ! she did not see Black Care- 
 mounted behind that skilful rider as he was paraded along the 
 course amidst the shouting crowds ! 
 
 It was too late to fly. She was encompassed. The swarthy 
 gipsy-woman who came to beg her to cross her hand with silver,, 
 and, as she laughingly held out her palm, mumbled to her about a 
 fair young man who had gone a long journey, but who would see 
 her again shortly, had her eye upon her. The post-boy who was 
 regaling on the dinner drawn from her own hamper, who was de- 
 vouring her own viands, and fuddling himself with her own wines,, 
 had been bribed to watch her, and did watch her, mingled 
 liquids notwithstanding. There was an Ethiopian serenader with 
 a straw hat and a monstrous shirt-collar, and who came and 
 serenaded her with a broken banjo, who was appointed to spy 
 over her. Her liorses were in safe keeping, and would be 
 harnessed only by superior order. For Florence Armytage was 
 wanted very badly indeed, and no expense was spared for the 
 accomplishment of the purpose certain parties held in view. 
 
 And who do you think was to have been Mrs. Armytage's 
 cavalier on this occasion ? The cavalier had not come yet. 
 H se faisait attendre. He was coming. Ah, Florence, he was 
 coming ; and he was to take her home. 
 
 There was a prodigious gathering of carriages on the Hill. 
 Threading the maze at Hampton Court was a light and easy task 
 compared with the labour of following the ins and outs of the
 
 CAUGHT. 355 
 
 close-clustered carriages. There they were, axle to axle, and pole 
 to panel, in anything but comfortable proximity : so the gentle- 
 men thought who had to perform acrobatic feats on the tires of 
 wheels, and clamber over splinterbars, and, judging from land- 
 marks or flags or tents or stands opposite, kept continually finding 
 themselves five hundred yards away from the carriages they 
 wished to get. The ladies were better off", for they seldom stirred 
 from the chariots in whicb they throned it in dazzling state. 
 However, everybody found his carriage at last, and then everybody 
 went to lunch. 
 
 The first meal after a shipwreck, or the relief of a beleaguered 
 city, is said to afford a very fair sample of the ravenous faculties 
 of humanity. The poor Turks whom the Russian General put 
 down to the first good dinner they had eaten for months after he 
 had starved them out of Kars, were not reckoned bad trencher- 
 men ; and the onslaught on the eatables at a subscription ball in 
 the country is a sufficiently ferocious spectacle to witness. I 
 have witnessed, too, some edifying little specimens of knife-and- 
 fork practice at picnics. But great as is said to be the delight 
 experienced at finding that the salt has been forgotten, and that 
 the salad-dressing has spread itself all over the table-cloth, and 
 has not left a drop of lubrication for the salad, a picnic is, after 
 all, a very tame and colourless affair. The provender wants the 
 relish, the excitement. If you can get up something like a 
 good quarrel among the guests eu route, it is an advantge, and 
 makes those who haven't quarrelled fall to more heartily. But 
 then unanimity of temper will sometimes prevail even at picnics. 
 A thunderstorm isu't bad, or a big dog that suddenly rushes from 
 a thicket and carries off" a lobster or a leg of lamb ; but these 
 additional zests to good cheer cannot always be counted on with 
 certainty. Por real, staunch, predatory, rapacious feeding, com- 
 mend me to the lunch after a great race. There is every variety 
 of excitement to sharpen and heighten the appetite. Tou are 
 out for a holiday, to begin with, and are partaking of fare to 
 which you are not accustomed; for few people are so Apician or 
 Luculline in their ways as to cram themselves all the year round 
 with the good things they consume on a Derby or Ascot Cup Day. 
 If you have won, you eat and drink tremendously, of course. If 
 
 A A 2
 
 85 G THE SEVEN SONS 0"F MAMMON. 
 
 you have lost, you eat for spite aud drink for despair, likewise 
 tremendousl}', and equally of course. If tlie weather be fine, 
 what can there be more pleasant than to see the sun making 
 the sparkling Moselle more sparkling, and tipping the crisp 
 lettuce-leaves with diamond sparks ? If it be wet, there is 
 some consolation in cowering under a phaeton hood to crunch 
 chicken-bones, or gorging pigeon-pie in the liuis clos of a drag. 
 Then you are continually under a nervous apprehension — by no 
 means devoid of pleasurable sensations, — that the gipsies and 
 tramps will run away with half the things out of the hamper ; 
 that the evilly-disposed will steal the great double-handled silver 
 tankard or champagne cup; that all the glasses will be broken, 
 and the knives, forks, and napkins mislaid ; that the post-boys — 
 who are in a fair way already — will get hopelessly inebriated ; and 
 that everything you have eaten or drunk will disagree with you 
 to-morrow morning. There is but one drawback to tlie varied 
 excitements of a race-course lunch, and that is, to find when 
 feeding time has arrived that your hamper has been cut away 
 from the back of your carriage, and that, unless you choose to 
 jostle your way to a horrible booth, into which a lady cannot 
 enter, and where you pay half-a-crown for a bone and some beer- 
 slops, there is no lunch and no dinner for you at all. 
 
 It may be contended that this out-of-door feeding does not 
 develope the finer feelings of humanity. To me it seems that 
 it developes something quite as good, — the fine old English 
 custom of carrying your victuals with you, sitting down to eat 
 them when you are a hungered, and letting the beggar who looks 
 wistfully on have his share in the fragments. The merest churl 
 will not deny a portion from his venison-pasty to a beggar-woman 
 on Derby Day. How the ragged rogues riot in dainty flesh, and 
 wheaten bread, and choice liquors ! I say that this is an English 
 custom. It is the good old institution of the bread-and-cheese 
 which Hudibras carried in his sword-scabbard. It is the insti- 
 tution of the " parcel,"— the rich meaty packet of good things 
 which stage-coach travellers used to carry with them, which 
 third-class aud sensible-class passengers by railway carry with 
 them now, aud which, were the fashion only followed by the 
 first-class journeyers, would very speedily shame the proprietors
 
 CAUGHT. 857 
 
 of railway refreshment-rooms into providing something better 
 for wayfarers than the moiikly rubbish -which, at extortionate 
 rates, they sell now. Tes ; the practice of " parcel " carrying 
 is purely Anglo-Saxon. Sancho Panza, I admit, had onions, 
 cheese, and other things in his wallet ; but Sancho Panza was 
 wise enough to be an Englishman, and I never knew a modern. 
 Spaniard who had anything in his wallet beyond a stick of cho- 
 colate and some paper and tobacco for his cigaritos. I have 
 heard of a Scottish army who, marching to the wars, was provided 
 each and every man with a little bag of oatmeal, and an iron plate 
 whereon to knead and bake it. It teas that Scottish army that ivon 
 the Battle of Bannoclchurn. They may have burnt their bannocks: 
 but for once they beat us. Had they trusted to a commissariat, 
 they would have been beaten. The Highlanders who defeated 
 Johnny Cope at Preston Pans had had their hrealcfasts, not 
 " cauld kail in Aberdeen," but a hearty meal. I was reading, 
 the other day, Mr. Thomas Francis Meaglier's vindication of the 
 " stampedo " of his corps at the battle of Bull's Eun. " It is not 
 in the nature of an Irishman," pleaded Mr. Meagher, " to fight 
 with four or five pounds of salt pork and biscuit hanging to his 
 hip ;" and so the Irish at Manassas threw away their rations, 
 and ultimately stampeded. Thomas Prancis, this was a grievous 
 error! I believe that it is in the nature of an Irishman to fight, 
 had he a whole fat pig and a barrel of biscuit on his head ; but 
 he would fight much better with his belly full, or with the 
 materials for his dinner in his pouch. It was when the commons 
 were short that our troops came to grief in the Crimea. Directly 
 beef became abundant, and the porter-casks began to flow steadily, 
 Gortsehalioff" began to tremble ; and to me, next to Plorence 
 Nightingale's heroism, and Haglan's death, and the deed of that 
 good Prench General who caught up the wounded English 
 soldier to his saddle-bow, landed him safely, kissed his hand, 
 left him, and never told his name, there is nothing so simply 
 touching in the whole story of the Crimean "War as that of the 
 English matrons heaping up mighty plum-puddiugs, and huge 
 pasties, and great mince-pies, and sending them far, far away 
 to the black Taurida, where our gallant hearts were keeping 
 Christmas in the teeth of the Muscovite.
 
 358 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 riorence had quite a little court about her, although there 
 were dozens of carriages around that were far more splendid than 
 her own equipage. Those who saw her that day, for the last 
 time, declared that never had she looked prettier, or been more 
 fascinating. She was once more JLa Dame au Premier — the gay, 
 impetuous, triumphant Lady on the First Floor, dominating all, 
 dismayed by none; not the careworn, excited, ever-seeking, 
 never-finding Florence Armytage that we have sometimes known 
 in London. They were five hundred miles away from her, all 
 those carking cares and troubles, those fears and dark suspicions 
 of impending discovery and ruin. Bills ! what did she care about 
 bills ? Forgery ! who had committed forgery ? She would win 
 Lord Carnation, she thought. She would quit the life, and be 
 good. " I'll retire on my laurels," she said to herself, with a 
 malicious little laugh. 
 
 Eetire on her laurels ! AVin Lord Carnation ! "Was there not 
 a place in the north called Hoogendracht ? was there not a place 
 in the south called Belleriport ? 
 
 " I'll win him too," she muttered, and she looked at her locket, 
 as she had done in the room at Paris, and clenched her little 
 fist ; and the smile went away, but came again in an instant. 
 
 Eetire on her laurels ! Win the hearts of men ! What had 
 she done with Tottlepot's handwriting only the day before ? The 
 thought caused her scarcely any uneasiness. It was sure to come 
 right, she thought. She had a strange fancy that Tottlepot 
 would die, that Sir Jasper Goldthorpe would have a fit of apo- 
 plexy, that something would occur to secure immunity for what 
 she had done. At other times, she would have started and 
 shivered when the question arose stark and hideous, like a nightmare : 
 " Florence Armytage, what is to be done ? " Now she laughed, 
 and made light of the nightmare. There was a perpetual panorama 
 of people she knew passing, or rather dodging, along the narrow 
 passage of which her carriage made one of the innumerable angles. 
 Now it was courtly Doctor Sardonix, complimenting her upon 
 her good looks, and upon her thorough restoration to health. 
 It was a way the Doctor had of assuming that everybody had been 
 ill, but was now looking better than ever, and that he, Dr. Sardonix, 
 had been somehow instrumental in effecting the cure.
 
 CAUGHT. 359 
 
 *' But I haven't been ill at all, Doctor," Mrs. Armytage 
 insisted. 
 
 " Tut, tut, we know, we know," the physician returned, with 
 polite denial. " Bronchial affection at Brighton. Our little 
 prescriptious were, I hear, remembered at Kemp and Glaisher's. 
 The best chemists, — the very best chemists in the town. I shall 
 be always happy to do anything for you that my poor skill will 
 afford." And the Doctor was picking his way gingerly between 
 the wheels and the servants who were regaling on the grass, 
 when Florence, who did not care to argue the point of her 
 fabulous illness with him any longer, called him back. 
 
 "Well, I am better," she admitted, "and I'm very much 
 obliged to you, dear Doctor Sardonix. Are any of the Gold- 
 thorpes here — I mean, besides Willy ? He passed me at Ewell, 
 in a drag full of Guardsmen." 
 
 The doctor elevated his eyebrows a little at the word " drag ;" 
 but he answered with unabated urbanity. 
 
 "Sir Jasper is here; indeed it was solicitude lest my illustrious 
 patient should in any way over exert himself that has brought 
 me, a grave physician, little accustomed to these giddy scenes, 
 here to-day." 
 
 This was the neatest of little fibs that was ever told by a 
 Fellow of the College of Physicians. The Doctor had come 
 down in a snug barouche-and-four with old Sir Jernigan Jernig'an> 
 — " Garter Jernigan " he used to be called, — who had once been 
 valet to King George the Fourth, and had risen, nobody knew 
 how, to be his apothecary, and his Privy Purse, and other things 
 besides, — so the chronicle of the time said. Sir^ Jernigan never 
 missed a great race. " My royal master was a patron of the 
 turf," he said, " and I'll be one too, till old Jernigan Jernigan" 
 — his real Christian name was John, but he had doubled the 
 surname on promotion — "is laid with his fathers." I think 
 it would have puzzled the heralds, to say nothing of the autho- 
 rities of Lambeth parish, to discover who John Jernigan's 
 father was. 
 
 "Sir Jasper, ah. Sir Jasper," mused Mrs. Armytage. "Any 
 one else, Dr. Sardonix ? " 
 
 " Lady Goldthorpe is here, dear madam, more in obedience to
 
 3G0 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 my illustrious patient's Avislaes than for any pleasure slie takes in 
 this revelry. Miss Hill, I need scarcely say, is not here. Miss 
 Salusbury is here, with the Earl of Carnation, and a gentleman, 
 who, I believe ordinarily attends his Lordship in a clerical capar 
 city, but is to-day in a lay habit." 
 
 The Doctor was right. The Earl's chaplain (who wrote his 
 pamphlets for him) was of a decidedly sporting turn, and not 
 altogether free from the suspicion of having gone down to Mil- 
 lington to see the figlit between Boss Belper (the Mauleyton Pet) 
 and Puggy AViggins's Black for a hundred pounds a side, laying 
 rather heavily on the darkey's colours. He generally managed to 
 get down to the Downs without compromising himself, and on 
 this occasion, in a shooting-coat and a wide-awake, passed all but 
 unrecognised in the rumble of the Goldthorpe, — I mean of one of 
 the Goldthorpe carriages. His noble patron had an indistinct 
 idea that this wasn't quite correct in the Eeverend James Feld- 
 spar, and that it wasn't philanthropic, and that kind of thing; 
 but he was afraid of the chaplain, who was more than any one else 
 in the secret of his Lordship's having been " over-educated for his 
 intellect," and who might, were he driven to it, write a pamphlet 
 against Jiim. So he let him have his way. 
 
 Florence started when she heard the name of Lord Carnation. 
 " He is sure to be this way soon," she thought. " The thing shall 
 be done this very afternoon. He shall come back with me, far 
 all those Goldthorpes. Tes, he shall. Am I not a widow ? Ha, 
 ha, cannot I do as I like ? One moment, dear Doctor," she con- 
 tinued. " Have you heard what Willy Goldthorpe has done on 
 this race ? You know he bets dreadfully." 
 
 The Doctor had not heard one word about the upshot of the 
 Captain's transactions, and he was very anxious to get back to Sir 
 Jernigan Jernigan, who was waiting lunch for him, and was a man 
 not to be trifled with. So he shot a good bouncing fib at what 
 the old artillery man used to call " full random." 
 
 "As usual, the favourite of Portune, — carrying all before 
 him ; but I must leave you, my dear madam. Good bye, good- 
 bye." 
 
 And away went the Doctor, not only anxious about his lunch, 
 but somewhat nervous of compromising himself with some of the
 
 CAUGHT. 3G1 
 
 more fastidious of bis acquaintance by further parley Tvitli that 
 delightful but inexplicable Mrs. Armytage. 
 
 "I don't believe a word that man says," she thought on her 
 part, " How he fawns and lies, to be sure ! "What need is there 
 for him to do so ? They say he is both rich and clever. Edmund, 
 you may unpack the hamper. I shall have half a dozen guests to 
 lunch before I have eaten a mouthful. Stay, there is that man 
 Gafferer prowliug about as usual. If he sees a sign of lunch, he'll 
 want me to give him some. Well, yes, Edmund," she continued 
 aloud, "you may go on unpacking. Mr. Gafferer, here! " 
 
 Her little silver voice was never raised to discordant accents, 
 but it always reached far enough. It struck at once on the tym- 
 panum of friendly George Gafferer, who was — well, not exactly 
 prowliug about, or wandering about, or sneaking about, but, we 
 will say walking about, in the hope of being asked to lunch by 
 somebody. George bad come down alone, very early, by the rail. 
 He had not taken a return-ticket. Somebody, he opined, would 
 be sure to give him a cast home. And the sanguine man was 
 right. Somebody always did. 
 
 George was always getting things for nothing. If people didn't 
 leave him much in their wills, they at least took care that his 
 friendly heart should be bedewed with a refreshing shower of 
 little legacies during their lives. These came more pleasantly, as 
 he had to pay no duty upon them. Now it was Jack Lindo, who 
 went away to Australia and left George half the furniture in his 
 chambers, his tiger-skin rug, and his great Turkish pipe. Now 
 Plantagenet Eosencrantz, who had at one time been crazy after pri- 
 vate theatricals, grew disgusted therewith, and bestowed his Hamlet 
 and his Macbeth dresses, his stage jewelry and his broad-swords, 
 upon friendly George Gafferer. Somebody once gave him a 
 valuable diamond-ring — at least Mr. Attenborough's mortgage- 
 note for the same, which would have been well nigh as valuable 
 as the article itself, only the liberal soul who had mortgaged it 
 forgot that it ran only for six months in lieu of a year ; and so 
 George got nothing by it, after all. 
 
 George knew Mrs. Armytage, and trembled before her. To 
 him she was a duchess, a queen, and an empress. He had written 
 some little words to a song she bad composed. She had once
 
 362 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 asked him to an evening party. George's boon companions — be 
 bad many boon companions — used to rally him about the " pretty 
 little widow," and tell him that he was a "lucky fellow." Then 
 0-eorge would blush — he could blush — and chuckle. In Mrs. 
 Armytage's presence he blushed, but did not chuckle. 
 
 "Mr. Gafferer, will you have some lunch?" the little lady 
 asked, with a patronising nod, and without offering him her hand. 
 
 George was delighted, enchanted. He was not asked into the 
 carriage. He sat contentedly upon a wheel, and ate and drank 
 his fill ; and then the widow said to him, 
 
 " I want to hear about Captain Goldthorpe. What has he 
 done on the race ? Tell me the truth." 
 
 Friendly George Gafferer could not certainly be accused of 
 telling less than the truth. He always told more than the truth, 
 an extreme which may sometimes be as dangerously inconvenient 
 as its opposite. 
 
 "Dear, dear me," George began, shaking his friendly head. 
 "Sad news, sad news, madam." 
 
 " What is the matter ? " 
 
 " Euin, my dear lady, ruin ! Utter and irremediable ruin, 
 unless Sir Jasper pays all. Seven-and-thirty thousand, my 
 dear madam. Fifteen thousand three hundred to a biscuit- 
 baker in Orchard-street, Portman-square. They say the Cap- 
 tain laid ten-pound notes to fourpenny-pieces on Jumping 
 Jemmy." 
 
 " What is Jumping Jemmy ? A man or a horse ? " 
 
 " A horse, my dear madam ; a dreadful bright bay creature, 
 with long legs, and a star on the forehead. They say that good 
 was never known to come out of a horse with a star on the fore- 
 head. This ' Jumping Jemmy ' has been the ruin of half the 
 young men about town." 
 
 " And William Goldthorpe is ruined, then ? " 
 
 " As ruined as a young man with his magnificent prospects 
 can be." 
 
 " What do you know about his prospects, and whether they are 
 magnificent or not ? " 
 
 " I only know what I hear, and what everybody talks about. 
 Extravagant as he has been. Sir Jasper will hardly allow his son's
 
 CAUGHT. 363 
 
 name to be compromised. But it's not only in laorse-flesli that 
 the poor captain's dipped." 
 
 " What, can there be anything else ?" exclaimed Mrs. Armytage, 
 who knew perhaps about five hundred times more than George 
 Grafierer what William Goldthorpe's embarrassments really were, 
 and what means he had of getting rid of them. " For goodness' 
 sake, dear Mr. GafFerer, tell me all about it." 
 
 " Ah, dear me, madam, it would take hours ; but, at all events, 
 I can tell you this much, that " 
 
 Just as George was commencing a fresh lamentable revelation, 
 William Goldthorpe himself, with Lord Groomporter and one 
 or two kindred spirits, came up, certainly looking very disconso- 
 late. 
 
 " Thank you," said Mrs. Armytage to George. It was impos- 
 sible for her to say in plainer terms, " Go away." The friendly 
 man took the hint. He was only too glad to have been in her 
 society even for a few minutes, and to have refreshed himself with. 
 her hospitality. So he went away rejoicing, hoping that somebody 
 had seen him, and would rally and envy him for having been seen 
 sitting on the pretty little widow's carriage-wheel. A contented 
 spirit was friendly George Gafferer, and his pleasures were very 
 cheap. 
 
 Florence was very eager to know the extent of the Captain's 
 losses ; but she could not elicit any very definite information from 
 him. The young man was sulky, and said that he had bad a 
 " doose of a bad time of it," and that there would be "a doose of 
 a blow-up with the governor." He did not respect Mrs. Armytage 
 quite enough to speak to her as ladies are accustomed to be spoken 
 to. Then Groomporter was with him, and his lordship, who was 
 the best-dressed and the most habitually tipsy young peer in 
 England, was already very far gone in iced wines ; and on being 
 asked what might be ofiered to him, replied in a voice somewhat 
 thick and husky that he should like some " braiorsoawarr," by 
 which it is to be presumed that Viscount Groomporter meant 
 brandy and soda-water. Yery wealthy, very young, exceedingly 
 good-natured, was Yiscount Groomporter. He was always a good 
 friend to the people who were his greatest enemies : forgave 
 Captain de Loos three months after the trial at which it was
 
 364 THE SEVEN SONS OF JIAMMON. 
 
 proved that the disreputable captain had forged his name, and 
 positively sent him money to Kissingen to enable him to go 
 salmon-fishing in Norway. Viscount Groomporter was, I have 
 observed, one of the best-dressed noblemen in the peerage. His 
 blue surtout with the velvet collar, liis scarf, his pin, his white hat, 
 were perfection. Dandies sighed in vain to know the address of 
 his trousers-maker, or of the artist who modelled those boots so 
 carefully to his feet. When people saw him, superlatively attired, 
 gloved, handkerchiefed, say about three in the afternoon, going up 
 the steps of Pall Mall, their first impulse was one of admiration 
 to see sucli a well-looking, well-dressed young gentleman ; their 
 next was one of astonishment that his eyes should be so bloodshot<, 
 and his gait so unsteady. For A^iscount Groomporter was pre- 
 cisely that which Oliver Cromwell declared Charles the Second to 
 be, and what tlie reticence of the nineteenth century forbids me 
 to i-epeat. In truth, his lordship was incorrigible, and his thirty 
 thousand a year seemed to have a fair chance of being submerged 
 in " braiorsoawarr." 
 
 There was not much, as you see, to be gleaned by Florence from 
 the conversation of tliese young patricians. They were, besides, 
 anxious to be after their own devices, — throwing at sticks, con- 
 versing with the occupants of broughams far more equivocal than 
 that of the Indian widow, wandering among the booths, and so 
 forth, — and she let them go. She shook hands, however, with 
 "William Goldthorpe ; and when the young man found his hand 
 released, there was a bank-note in it crumpled up. 
 
 "Don't look at it," whispered Mrs. Armytage hurriedly; 
 "never mind what it is. Keep it till you get away from here, and 
 then spend it. It'll pay for something." 
 
 "But I can't, Mrs. Armytage," the Captain murmured hesi- 
 tatingly, blushing up to the tips of his ears. 
 
 " Yes, you can. Am I not a soldier's widow ? Mayn't I do 
 what I like with my own ? There, get along with you after youv 
 friends. Bonjour.^^ And so dismissed him. 
 
 Her own! She had assuredly never come honestly by that 
 money ; but she had nevertheless given him a bank-note for fifty 
 pounds, and she had given it him in pure good nature and sym- 
 pathy for his misfortunes. As he retreated she put her head out
 
 CAUGHT. 3C5 
 
 of the carriage-wiudo^, and, not for the first time, whispered 
 softly to herself, 
 
 " Poor fellow, how like Hugli he is ! " 
 
 As she drew her head back, she found the door on the other 
 side open. As she turned her face in surprise towards it, she 
 found the figure of a man standing in the aperture. He was stout 
 and of good stature ; he was about fifty years of age. She had 
 met him the night before ; but she did not recognise him as Count 
 somebody, with a full moustache and whisker and a curly black 
 wig, who was the afilible guest of the Baroness de la Haute 
 Gueuse. She recognised in him instead the man with a face 
 impudent as that of a jack-pudding, a paillasse, who had leered at 
 her so audaciously from the coftee-room window of the Chambers 
 in Soho. But both the Jack-pudding and the Paillasse wore their 
 heart upon their sleeve, and both were Simon Lefranc. 
 
 " The saucy fellow ! " she cried in easy indignation, and ex- 
 tended her hand to close the door and shut the intruder out. But 
 another hand came forth, — the hand of which the sleeve had the 
 heart upon it; and Tlorence Armytage's wrist was suddenly 
 caught in a grip like that of steel. 
 
 She knew the worst had come. Her disenwas;ed hand sought, 
 quick as lightning, her side. There should have been nestling 
 there, in an embroidered pouch, the tiny revolver, without which 
 she never travelled. It was her custom to assure herself of its 
 presence at least twice in an hour. This verification had become 
 a habit. The pistol had been safe twenty minutes since; but I 
 think the swarthy gipsey who had told her about the fair young 
 man who was gone on a journey knew something of the em- 
 broidered pouch and its pretty, murderous contents. 
 
 " The little dog that barks is gone away," whispered Simon 
 Lefranc. " Plorence Armytage, you are my prisoner. Veuve 
 Armytage, se servant de phisieurs noms et prenoms faux. De par 
 la ^epubliqxie, une et indivisible, et par mandat d'amener sous seing 
 officiel,je vous arrete" 
 
 "I took her," said Simon subsequently to his chief, " with all 
 the formalities. It was charminc:." 
 
 She saw that all was over. She did not faint, but her face was 
 the colour of bleached was ; and had any been privileged to place
 
 366 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 their hands between her shoulder-blades, they "would have found 
 a cold dew there. Her knees knocked together ; her hand 
 quivered like a bird in the thief-catcher's grip ; but she did not 
 faint. Not she. 
 
 " "What is it ? " she asked ? " what is it for ? " 
 
 " Murder, burglary, and forgery. Tou know as well as I do. 
 Ah, ma mie,je t'accroche a la longue" 
 
 riorence's postboy's duty was quite over, and he was asleep 
 comfortably under the carriage-pole, with his head in a salad-bowl. 
 Three intelligent foreigners stood before the window opposite to 
 Simon. They had drawn the blinds down, Nothing could have 
 been better managed — it was charming. 
 
 The policeman got into the carriage, and sat down close to 
 Mrs. Armytage's side. She shrank away from him shuddering, 
 but made no effort to scream or to resist. 
 
 " We will have the other blind down, so ; that is nice and com- 
 fortable," Simon remarked, suiting the action to the word. "You 
 are not afraid of being alone with Papa Lallouet in this crqmscule, 
 eh, ma petite?'" 
 
 Simon Lefranc had many names ; Florence knew him by this 
 one. She had often heard of, but never seen, the dreaded per- 
 sonage whom for years she had started at in her sleep. Papa 
 Lallouet was called the Parrain de la Guillotine, but I prefer stdi 
 to call him Simon Lefranc, the man who wore his heart upon his 
 sleeve. 
 
 *' Which will you do ? " he asked. " Will you make a fuss, — a 
 tiniamarre, — and oblige me to have you carried away by the 
 English police, and before an English magistrate, to have your 
 warrant of extradition read, and be publicly consigned to my cus- 
 tody ? or will you go away quietly with Papa Lallouet, like a good 
 little girl, as you ought to be ? If you accompany me of your 
 own free will, it will save all the esclandre of an examination in a 
 police-court ; and we can be as happy as two turtle-doves till we 
 get home." 
 
 She had reason indeed to be afraid of the publicity of her arrest 
 in England. Five hundred creditors — five hundred people whom 
 she had defrauded, robbed, forged upon — would read the story of 
 her crimes, and rush forward to be confronted with and to identify
 
 CAUGHT. 367 
 
 her. It was better, she thought, now the worst had come to the 
 worst, to go with this man. She knew that in France slie had a 
 certain Influence, and with the hand that was not a captive she 
 felt her soft neck, and thought, " At least this is safe." 
 
 " Don't be too sure," said Simon, who even in the gloom had 
 marked her movement, and seemed to divine her thought. " Ee- 
 member, it is assassinat — what the English law calls wilful murder 
 — that I arrest you for. Tou go with me without promise or con- 
 dition on my part. Make up your mind, or the English police 
 will come to my help." 
 
 " Do they know of my fate ? " she asked. 
 
 " They know everything ; but the thing is arranged. They 
 could get a dozen warrants for your arrest on charges for all you 
 have done here in England by ten o'clock to-morrow morning." 
 
 " And, pray, what have I done here, Monsieur Lallouet ? " the 
 wretched little creature, with a touch of her old disdain and her 
 old impertinence, interposed. 
 
 "Ta, ta, ta! " the police agent replied, " Don't try to put me 
 off my guard, you little crocodile. I am too old pour confer sor- 
 nettes. What have you done in England ? What have you not 
 done ? Do you think that we, of the Eue de Jerusalem, have not 
 kept the history of your life and adventures by double entry, en 
 partie double, these five years past ? We know all about you, ma 
 'petite honne femvie : — how you have lied and cheated and swindled ; 
 how you have stolen and forged; how you have perhaps done 
 worse things, — for which you will have to sit on the benches of 
 the cour d'assises." 
 
 " I will go with you," Mrs. Armytage murmured, and with a 
 gesture of despair. 
 
 " Very well ; but, remember, it is murder. On ifCy ricane pas 
 en France, ma lelle." 
 
 "I am innocent," she answered. "Besides — " She halted; 
 but her hand sought her neck again, and, with a smile, — a ghastly 
 smile, almost the last that ever visited those now livid lips, — she 
 thought, " Ah ! I have still one Influence left. They will never 
 guillotine poor little Me." 
 
 "In that case," pursued Simon Lefranc, "we will wait quietly 
 and comfortably with the blinds down until such time as we can
 
 368 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMIION. 
 
 get away. In this throng nobody, without some distinguishing 
 mark, will be able to recognise your carriage. Are you 
 content ? " 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "Silence gives consent. Permit me, then, to trouble you;" 
 and Simon Lefranc slipped the neatest little handcuff in the 
 world over Florence's wrist, on which he had not for one moment 
 loosened his hold. The handcuff was attached by a ring to 
 another of larger size, and this Simon slipped over his own wrist, 
 cheerfully humming a little tune the while. " La, nous voila dans 
 les menottes," he said. "Not quite so comfortable perhaps as 
 your diamond-bracelets ; but still I hope this little ornament does 
 not hurt you." 
 
 She never answered. 
 
 " Go to sleep, ona petite,'" Simon paternally advised, " or think 
 about your defence for the day of trial. If I were you, I would 
 retain Maitre Paillet, or at least Chaix d'Estange. There, you 
 shall be treated like a lady, and have the best to eat and drink 
 till we are safe at home. I can't take you across the Channel 
 handcuffed like this ; but you shall be carried on board the 
 steamer at Dover as a lady very sick. Tou are very sick. We 
 will have you nicely wrapped up in shawls and blankets, so that 
 nobody will see the bright little bracelets which we will take the 
 liberty of placing round your wrists and round your ancles." 
 
 She heard, but she let the man have his say, and answered him 
 naught. She was thinking. She was in the toils. What mat- 
 tered it if the net round her were tight or loose ? They had got 
 her, and might lead her along as they chose. 
 
 She closed her eyes, and, strange as it may seem, experienced 
 something like a relaxation of anxiety, something that approached 
 comparative relief and ease. Naturalists have surmised that a 
 feeling somewhat analogous may be experienced by the hunted 
 hare, the hopelessly beset deer, when there is not one chance 
 more left, when the hounds are close at hand, and there is nothing 
 more left but to lie down and die. She had been hunted and 
 harried so long ; so many years had elapsed since she first began 
 to sleep with her eyes open — to start at every shadow, to fancy 
 every bush an officer, to be continually and perpetually in dread
 
 CAUGHT. 369 
 
 of discovery and seizure — that the mere reaction now soothed her. 
 There was nothing more to fly from, no more lies to tell, no more 
 stratagems to devise, no more gulfs to bridge over. So, at least, 
 she thought. So it might be, if she chose. Should she plead 
 guilty to all that was brought against her, and let them use her 
 as they pleased ? She experienced an indefinable reluctance to 
 concoct any story for her defence, to employ any means for ex- 
 tricating herself from her deadly peril. To-morrow, next week, 
 next month, next year — would do for all that, she seemed to think. 
 It was a matter that concerned her lawyers. She would have to 
 employ lawyers, she supposed. There was plenty of time for 
 that — plenty of time for all. She was drowsy with doing evil. 
 She was tired with crime. She wanted rest. The thing was bad 
 enough, certainly ; but it could not be much worse, and it was a 
 relief to know that the storm which had so long blackened the 
 sky had burst. 
 
 And while her mind refused to dwell with any intensity on her 
 present situation, or the circumstances which had led to it, it 
 returned over and over again to her early youth — to the days 
 when she was young and happy and — Grod help her ! — innocent. 
 She was saying the old lessons, playing at the same childish games, 
 romping about the same playground, dancing at her first party,. 
 reading her first love-letter, starting on her first voyage to 
 India. ' 
 
 She had been in captivity about half an hour — it seemed to 
 have been ten years — when a discreet tap came against the glass- 
 of the window nearest to Simon Lefranc. The police-agent drew 
 it down, and inclined his bullet-head to hear what was spoken to 
 him from without ; but, at the same time, he contrived to throw 
 a cloak between him and his prisoner so dexterously and in folds 
 so thick as to mufile any sound that might pass between that 
 window and her ear. 
 
 It was Inspector Millament who had tapped at the window. 
 The roar of the Babel outside first wafted through the aperture, 
 and let Florence know of its vicinage ; but the Inspector was an 
 adept at whispering, and not a word that he uttered could reach, 
 her through the heavy mass of drapery. 
 
 "Have you got your bird.? " he asked. 
 
 B B
 
 370 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 " Out, mon vieux. I have, my dear friend," responded Simon. 
 " She fluttered her wings a little at first ; but she is quiet and 
 peaceable as a dove, now." 
 
 " There is no necessity for our services, then ? " 
 
 *' JSTot the least. All will be managed without publicity and 
 scandal, which can only defeat the ends of justice. In fifteen 
 hours she will be safe in Paris." 
 
 " She is wanted very badly here, more by person than by name ; 
 and when she is tried, she will be sure to be recognised 
 by some one who knew her in England, and it will all come 
 out." 
 
 " Let it. "We have our instructions, and act by them. If you 
 like, I kidnapped her, and got her across the Channel without 
 your knowing anything about it. On n'y regardera pas de si pres, 
 a Paris. His chiefs will bear Papa Lallouet out, and say to 
 Simon Lefranc, ' My son, thou hast done well.' " 
 
 " "Well, you know best, I wish you joy of your capture. She's 
 worth having, Tou Frenchmen have certainly a very neat way 
 of doing business. If it had been our duty to take her, there 
 would have been a row, and lots of screaming, and a mob. The 
 whole thing would have been known in five minutes, and half-a- 
 dozen ' gentlemen of the press,' as they call themselves, would 
 have been pestering me with questions, and rushing off to the 
 station to telegraph the news to London." 
 
 " Tes," Simon observed with a quiet grin, " she is indeed worth 
 having. She is a pearl beyond price. She will be worth my 
 retraite, my retiring pension to me, monsieur, all the more surely 
 as I have taken her quietly. Por we want to pluck a few little 
 feathers off our pigeon before she is ready to be trussed and 
 roasted, and served up at the table of Madame la Justice. A 
 dainty morsel, ona foi; ha, ha ! " 
 
 He laughed quietly enough, but still in a tone loud enough to 
 make his victim start uneasily. He gave her haudcufied wrist a 
 warning shake, and in a savage undertone muttered " Be quiet ! " 
 and she was still as she was mute, 
 
 "And you," Simon continued, turning again to the Inspector, 
 " Have you done your business ? Have you caged your birds ? " 
 
 " Most extraordinary thing, we haven't," returned Inspector
 
 CAUGHT. 871 
 
 Millamenfc, in a tone of disappointment. " Journey down for 
 nothing ; and I'd such a sweet little bit of business cut out for 
 me in Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace, Bajswater! However, we've had 
 the pleasure of your company, and seen your way of doing 
 business." 
 
 '" Truly, you flatter me. The pleasure is, believe me, mutual. 
 But how have you missed your game ? It was well watched 
 enough. Has Sir Jasper Groldthorpe got away ? " 
 
 " No ; his carriage and party are within fifty yards of us ; but 
 within a minute of your leaving comes down a telegraphic mes- 
 sage to us to hold over all our warrants against him, leave off 
 watching him even, and come back to town." 
 
 " He is still very rich, perhaps, and very powerful, and has 
 influential friends." 
 
 " There's no man in England," retorted the vexed Inspector, 
 " powerful enough to step between a criminal and his prosecutors 
 ■when informations have once been sworn, and a warrant has once 
 been granted. We don't do things in a corner or in the dark 
 here, monsieur. ' Fair and above board ' is our motto. I was to 
 have taken him here, and I ought to have taken him here, and it's 
 deuced provoking." 
 
 The true Englishman spoke in Inspector Millament. All 
 detective policeman as he was, and accustomed to track his prey 
 very much in the manner of a sleuth hound, he would have been 
 shocked to learn that any of his prisoners — " customers," as he 
 called them — had been arrested without all due legal formalities 
 being observed ; or that, after capture, they had been deprived of 
 any legal means of defence. And, moreover, Inspector Milla- 
 ment was mortal. Though he railed at the "gentlemen of the 
 press," he was not insensible to the flattering notices frequently 
 bestowed on his sagacity and acumen by the newspaper reporters, 
 and ranked in the highest class of literary composition those 
 wondrously-spun paragraphs in which the "skilful recapture of an 
 escaped convict," or the "extraordinary detection of a bank- 
 robbery," or the " clever discovery of a fugitive bankrupt," was 
 ascribed to the pluck and energy of Sergeant South, or the zeal 
 tempered with discretion of Mr. — they always gave him the 
 Mister — Mr. Inspector Millament. 
 
 B B 2
 
 372 TEE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 The baffled Inspector was preparing to take leave of Simon, 
 ■when there came pressing through the throng Sergeant South, 
 beckoning hastily to his superior. The Inspector closed the 
 window ; Simon drew the blind down, and they were once more 
 in the gloom again. 
 
 But not for long, riorenee heard the clanking of a chain, the 
 lumbering of the carriage-pole, the shouts and curses of drivers 
 and post-boys who were being made to move their vehicles on one 
 side by the police. She strained her ears to catch some words ; 
 but the din of minstrels and niggers with their music, and the 
 roaring of the stick-throwing, and the brawlers and the chaffers 
 and the roysterers, made up only one harsh bumming noise, and 
 she could distinguish nothing. 
 
 Let us pass for the moment from the interior of that silken 
 prison to the outside. It has always been to me a marvel of 
 marvels how ever people manage to get a carriage off the Hill on 
 a great race-day without smashing five hundred coach-panels, and 
 crushing five thousand toes. It is done somehow. There are 
 always people who want to leave early, and they manage to leave 
 and get clear of the labyrinth of wheels, and drive away through 
 the grinning, scampering crowd; but the operation is nevertheless 
 astounding. So, in youth, were these four puzzling and bewilder- 
 ing things to me : first, to know how a ship got into a dock, and 
 how she got out of dock, without being stove in at some stage or 
 another; next, to know how ever the great Duke of Wellington, 
 in extreme old age, managed to get on his horse, and, finally, how 
 he contrived to get off it. 
 
 The four posters brought down by Mrs. Armytage were in due 
 time, that is to say, after a good long lapse of it, harnessed to the 
 carriage. The post-boy, who was tipsy, had disappeared ; so had 
 his comrade, not much superior to him, it must be admitted, in 
 sobriety. Their places were supplied by two new postillions of 
 great gravity of countenance, and who were thoroughly imper- 
 vious to the witticisms of the road. As the carriage, with the 
 blinds still down, was painfully manceuvred out of the ruck of its 
 surroundings, at least half a dozen mounted policemen showed 
 themselves exceedingly active in directing its movements and 
 clearing the way ; conspicuous among them was the Superin-
 
 CAUGHT. 873 
 
 tendenfc who had spoken to Millament and his companions on the 
 course. 
 
 The throng had of course their jest at the fact of the blinds of 
 the carriage being so closely drawn down, and various opinions were 
 hazarded as to the occupants haviug taken a little more than was 
 good for them. Derisive cries were heard of "Didn't it agree with 
 you ? " " jN"ever mind if your head aches ! " " Come out and have 
 some fresh air ! " Then soda-water corks and farthing dolls were 
 playfully thrown against the windows ; then the post-boys were 
 recommended to "go gently over the stones;" then it was 
 surmised that there was a lady inside with a "wicked old mar- 
 quis," who was adjured to "come out and show hisself." But 
 there is an end to everything, even to getting off the Hill at 
 Epsom. Away the carriage and its occupants went at last. 
 Away from the booths and the gipsy-tents, the hucksters' stalls, 
 the temporary stables. Away from the mad medley of lords and 
 ladies, gamblers, roues, thieves, fools, grooms, hostlers, gipsies, 
 beggars, policemen, mountebanks, and vagrant children. 
 
 There was an open barouche to which the horses were being 
 put, and which was full of the Daughters of Folly, all blazing in 
 paint and jewellery, and rich silks and laces. The poor creatures 
 within were half uproarious and half fractious with champagne. 
 A knot of dissipated young men were lounging over this carriage, 
 perched on wheels and box and rumble, and bandying about loose 
 talk and silver tankards. Among them, I am sorry to say, were 
 Captain Goldthorpe, already half consoled for his losses, and 
 Viscount Grroomporter, who was growing more and more flushed 
 as to his countenance, and less and less steady as to his legs. 
 
 The carriage came thudding by on the soft turf, and the young 
 siobleman seeing it cried, 
 
 " Why, Goldie, isn't that your friend Mrs. A.'s trap ? " 
 
 The dragoon looked and saw that it was. 
 
 ■" "What's she going away so early for ? " 
 
 ^' Because she chooses, I suppose, Groomporter." 
 
 ^' Tea," — I am afraid his Lordship pronounced the aflirmative 
 ^' yesh ; " — " but what has she got the blinds down for ? " 
 
 '• She may be tired ; she may have some one with her that she 
 doesn't care about being seen with."
 
 374 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 " Goldie," pursued Viscount Groomporter, witli much tipsy 
 gravity, " my opiuion is, that the little widow's very spoons upoR 
 you." 
 
 The Captain, remembering the fifty-pound note, which, by the 
 way, had been nearly doubled since he received it by a lucky 
 draw in a sweepstakes on one of the minor races, bluslied, and 
 was silent. 
 
 The curtained carriage drove away, and all association between 
 Florence Armytage and the British aristocracy faded away for 
 ever. She was thoroughly worn out, and fell into a sleep. 
 Simon Lefranc was not at all surprised to see her slumber. Had 
 he not, in his time, watched murderers sleeping in the condemned 
 cell the very night before their execution, galley-slaves reposing 
 on their hard deal boards ? " Why shouldn't she sleep, if she's 
 tired? and tired enough I dare say she is," quoth Simon Lefranc 
 to himself. 
 
 The cai'riage was driven along the most sequestered roads that 
 the postillions could hit upon, in order to avoid as much a& 
 possible the noise and confusion inseparable, as it would seem, 
 from coming home after a great race; yet with the minutest 
 precautions, and following bye-lane after bye-lane, they could not 
 help coming from time to time upon some carriage filled with 
 choice spirits, who roared, and laughed, and " chaffed," and gave 
 many other unmistakable signs of the wine being in and the wit- 
 being out. Comparatively early as they had started, they took so 
 many detours that it was ten o'clock at night before they came to 
 Clapham Common. 
 
 AVhen Florence Armytage woke for the first time, which was- 
 after about an hour's rest, she found that the carriage had halted, 
 and that the door was half open, with a man — not Simon, he had 
 not yet stirred from her side — standing thereat. A cup of tea 
 was handed to hei', which she drank greedily — as she would have- 
 drunk anything, from prussic acid to cura9oa. It must have been 
 very good tea, and very strong tea ; for she went to sleep again 
 five minutes after she had emptied the cup, and did not wake for 
 full three hours afterwards. 
 
 Then she woke thoroughly, and found, to her amazement, that 
 Simon Lefranc was no longer with her, and that her wrist was
 
 CAUGHT. 375 
 
 manacled to that of a woman. A little swinging lamp had been 
 lit ; and she could see that she had yet another travelling com- 
 panion, a woman who sat opposite to her. 
 
 She started, and would have screamed. The looks of these two 
 women terrified her ten thousand times more than the policeman 
 had done. Her terror was increased when the woman to whom 
 she was handcuffed bade her to " give them none of her non- 
 sense, for if she did she should be gagged." She bowed her 
 head, and spake no more till London was reached, and her new 
 life commenced.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ■WHAT PEOPLE SAID IN THE CITY. 
 
 In the first place, people said ia tbe City, and knew it for a 
 fact, that the Bank of England had raised its rate of discount. 
 The tightening of that financial screw, of course, had imme- 
 diately produced a corresponding tightness in the money market. 
 Money was no longer to be had on easy terms "in the street;" 
 — I wish that I knew when it was to be had on easy terms in the 
 houses ; — holders were firm, and wouldn't look even at the best of 
 paper. Merchants reputed wealtliy came with gloomy coun- 
 tenances out of the parlours of the great discount houses in 
 Lombard and Throgmorton Streets, their still unnegotiated 
 securities in their pockets. Things, to be brief, did not look 
 at all well in the City. 
 
 Things looked up the next day a little; then they looked 
 straightforward ; then sideways ; then down again, and worse 
 than ever. There could not be a panic, there could not be a 
 crash, people said, because, you see, there had never been so 
 much money in the country, or so many visitors in London 
 Trade was flourishing ; gold was coming in from California ; 
 mechanics and labourers were in full work ; many of the great 
 houses which had begun to falter and tremble a little gradually 
 recovered themselves. The Bank screw was relaxed ; the mer- 
 chants reputed wealthy went into Lombard Street parlours with 
 hopeful, and came out with joyful, countenances ; the Stock 
 Exchange resumed its wonted joviality ; there were no shadows 
 but one — a great black Shadow it was — where money-mongers 
 most do congregate. Peace and prosperity in the world, com- 
 mercial and financial, seemed to be returning, and yet, — things 
 did not look at all well in the City. 
 
 Things had their worst aspect; the great Shadow had its
 
 WHAT PEOPLE SAID IN THE CITY. 877 
 
 blackest hue, and hung like an imminent pall in and over a place 
 called Beryl Court. People — that is, the people who were supposed 
 to know a thing or two — talked all day long about Beryl Court, 
 and about Mammon, the proprietor and potentate thereof. And, 
 while they talked, it was curious to mark that they did not seem 
 to know on what particular peg to hang their conversation. They 
 fastened, of course, as a preliminary peg upon Sir Jasper Gold- 
 thorpe : but the baronet was convalescent ; he had been to the 
 Derby ; he was at business the next day, and in the evening was 
 to give a grand dinner-party to certain illustrious foreigners, then 
 sojourning in the British metropolis. The banquet was to be 
 followed by a grand ball. It was during the day of which this 
 was to be the triumphant conclusion that people in the City 
 talked most about Sir Jasper Goldthorpe. 
 
 Who were those people ? I cannot with certainty determinej 
 any more than I can fix with exactitude upon him who first states 
 authoritatively that Consols shall be ninety-seven and an eighth ; 
 that French Three per Cents, shall be sixty-five and a quarter. Some- 
 body must say so in the first instance, of course, in deference, per- 
 haps, to somebody else. Somebody else agrees with him ; a third 
 assentient adds his voice, and the quotation of the Funds is stricken. 
 
 But it may have been in Cornhill or in Capel Court, in 
 Lombard or Old Broad Street, that a White Waistcoat (corpu- 
 lent) brushes against a Blue Frock-coat (sparely built). To 
 them enter a Drab Felt Hat ; and a Brown Silk Umbrella with 
 an ivory handle makes up a fourth. 
 
 Says AVhite Waistcoat, " I hear for a certainty that it's all over 
 with him." 
 
 "Tou don't say so," ejaculates Blue Frock-coat. "It's true I 
 did hear some very queer rumours at the club this morning." 
 
 " He can't last twenty-four hours. He must go ; I know it for 
 a fact," Brown Silk Umbrella adds, giving himself a thwack on 
 the pavement. 
 
 " That's bad," joins in Drab Hat ; " and, to tell the truth, I've 
 heard a good deal about it myself since yesterday afternoon. They 
 say it's been a long time coming. He was always a close custo- 
 mer, and kept things pretty snugly to himself ; but the truth will 
 ooze out somehow."
 
 378 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 " All," remarks White Waistcoat, " he'd better have taken 
 partners." 
 
 " He never -would, though," Drab Hat continues, shaking 
 a shrewd head inside it. " They might have known a great 
 deal too much about the affairs of the House to be quite con- 
 venient." 
 
 " How much will he go for ?" 
 
 " A couple of millions at least." 
 
 " Say a million and a half." 
 
 " I'll bet it's over two, and that there won't be half-a-crown in 
 the pound assets. There never is in these great paper-crashes. 
 Money will make money of itself, just by turning itself over ; but 
 when paper goes to the bad, it doesn't leave enough revenue to 
 light a rushlight with." 
 
 " What's the secret? What has he been doing? He's been 
 in no great speculations in our market lately." 
 
 " Tou don't know how many hundred he's been at the bottom 
 of, and behind the scenes of. He was always such an old Slyboots. 
 They say he bolstered up the Luff bury Bank for years." 
 
 "Ah! I've heard that. He had something to do, too, with 
 Jubson's patents for raising wrecks with spun-glass cables." 
 
 " That big mill that was burnt down at Eochdale in May, and 
 wasn't insured, was his property, so I've heard." 
 
 " Hadn't he something to do with the Inland Heliogabalus 
 Docks in Paris ?" 
 
 "Don't know; but I'm sure he had the concession of the 
 Montevidean Eailway. I saw it in Galignani. Tou know, the 
 one that was to join the General South and Central American 
 Trunk Line ; — tunnel under Chimborazo, and run a branch to 
 Tehucantepec." 
 
 " Ah ! that was a nice little spec ; to say nothing of the Ulululu 
 copper-mines." 
 
 " And the Pitcairn's Island Packet-service." 
 
 " And the loan to the Eepublic of Prigas." 
 
 " And the quicksilver affair in Barataria." 
 
 " And the Grand Lama of Tibet's Lottery." 
 
 " And the Polar Circle Tallow-melting and Ice-preserving Com- 
 pany."
 
 WHAT PEOPLE SAID IN THE CITY. 879 
 
 " Pshaw ! any one of these things might have turned up 
 trumps," — it was Silk Umbrella who spoke ; — " it's all touch 
 and go. It isn't that rock he's split upon. It's paper! Giving 
 good money for bad bills, and lending huge sums to Houses that 
 never existed." 
 
 " And borrowing bigger sums to pay the interest," opines 
 "White "Waistcoat. 
 
 " It isn't that," breaks in Drab Hat, shaking the shrewd head 
 inside again. " I'll tell you what it is. Ifs Austria." 
 
 "Austria!" 
 
 " Yes, Austria. "Who lent the ready cash for the Austrians to 
 get Lombardy back again, taking a million Cremona fiddles as 
 security, which turned out to be Lowther Arcade ones ? Gold- 
 thorpe's House. "Who kept up the war in Hungary, and was 
 promised a lien on the crown of St. Stephen, till Kossuth ran 
 away with it? Goldthorpe's House. "Who filled the military 
 chest for the Austrians who garrisoned Leghorn ? "Who con- 
 tracted for the new fortifications at Venice and Mantua ? Who 
 kept the Tyrol in order, and took the Archduchess Sophia's 
 jewels out of pawn ? "Who, if he hadn't been sniffing after an 
 English peerage, which he'll never get, and if he hadn't been — 
 more's the shame — an Englishman, would have liked to go to 
 Yienna, and be made a German baron of ? I say, Goldthorpe's 
 House, and Jasper Goldthorpe ; and if he smashes to-day, it's his 
 own fault for a fool, and the Austrian government's for a pack of 
 rogues." 
 
 " But they may cash up," interposes Silk Umbrella. 
 
 *' Cash up ! They'll never cash up a farthing-piece ; I know 
 them of old, sir. They're on the verge of bankruptcy. To my 
 certain knowledge Austria — " 
 
 But I will not be so cruel to the reader as to repeat in detail 
 all that the Drab Hat (who is in the Eussia Trade, by-the-bye) 
 has to say about Austria. He is the greatest authority extant as 
 to the ways and means of that chronically embarrassed empire. 
 It is edifying, but terrific, to hear him on Austrian finance. He 
 is the only English politician who reads the (Esterreichische 
 Zeitung in the original. He is great upon the by-gone horrors 
 of the Spielburg ; upon the wrongs of Silvio Pellico ; upon the
 
 380 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 whipping of Madame de Maderspacli; upon the execution of 
 Ciceroacchio and Ugo Bassi. Austria is liis bugbear, his night- 
 mare. He is Prometheus with a double-headed eagle gnawing 
 at his vitals. They say at his Club that it is for his sole use and 
 benefit that the daily press entertain long-winded correspondents 
 at Yienna ; and, at all events, this is beyond doubt, that in all 
 places save City marts and exchanges, where, being immensely 
 wealthy, he is an oracle, and listened to with reverence, he is 
 generally known as " the Austrian bore." In club reading-room, 
 at social dinner-table, in gay saloon, people shudder and gather 
 themselves up, and if possible fly from the face of this insatiate 
 Austromane. Hence he likes the City much better than the 
 "West End, and thinks of becoming a member of a Club in Old 
 Broad Street, and taking his name off the books in Pall Mall. 
 " "Would you believe it," he says to Silk Umbrella, " that only 
 yesterday, as I was trying to explain the history of the Aulic 
 Council to Dr. Scoggles at the Bonassus, that impudent fellow, 
 Scanderbeg, who's only a literary man, and hasn't got a penny in 
 the world, told me that he wished the Aulic Council was at 
 Jericho!" 
 
 White AVaistcoat, Silk Umbrella, Blue Frock-coat, Drab Hat, 
 all of them go their several ways, and by-and-by form into other 
 groups with other articles of raiment with human beings within 
 them ; and the rumour swells and swells, and is a rolling stone 
 that gathers moss, and a snowball that grows bigger, and an ava- 
 lanche that comes tumbling, and a cataract that comes splashing, 
 and a thunder-cloud that bursts, and a volcano that vomits forth 
 its lava and sends up its scorise, and a tempest that tears up the 
 golden trees by the roots and scathes the silver plains, and an 
 earthquake that yawns sudden and tremendous, and engulfs 
 IMammon and his millions for ever. 
 
 " Have you heard the news," friendly George Gafferer asks 
 Tom Soapley, — with whom he is most intimate and friendly, and 
 whom he cordially hates, — " have you heard the news, my dearest 
 chick ? " 
 
 It is half-past two o'clock in the afternoon, and George, who 
 has always some " business " in the City, although neither he 
 nor anybody else can tell what it is, has looked in at the Bay-
 
 WHAT PEOPLE SAID IN THE CITY. 381 
 
 Tree in quest of a chop and a glass of slierr}', and finds Soaplej 
 there ou the same errand. 
 
 " AVhat news ? " 
 
 " Tlie great house of Goldthorpe has stopped payment, — 
 stopped payment ! gone to utter, hopeless smash ! Sir Jasper 
 Goldthorpe's cut his throat — his own throat, my chick ; Lady 
 Goldthorpe poisoned herself with naphtha — no, camphine — out 
 of a lamp. Sir Jasper's ward — you know — Miss Hill, — all her 
 savings are swallowed up ; and they say that the head clerk in 
 Beryl Court has bolted with ninety thousand, and that before 
 Sir Jasper committed suicide he tried to set fire to the house in 
 Onyx Square, only the flames were extinguished by Dr. Sardonix 
 and the under-butler. And he was at the race only yesterday, 
 looking better than ever, and was to have given a grand dinner 
 and ball this evening, to which I was invited. I've got the card, 
 as big as a pancake, at home, my dear chick." 
 
 "I don't believe it," Soapley returns. 
 
 " Sir ! " George exclaims, drawing himself up. 
 
 " I don't mean about the invitation, — I was invited myself " 
 (both are lying), — " but the smash. I can't believe it, my dear 
 Mr. Gatferer;" Soapley never condescended to familiarity with 
 his rival, and was always profoundly obsequious to him. " Sir 
 Jasper Goldthorpe's position is too high in the City of LondoD^ 
 his fortune is too ample, his means are too vast, for such a disaster 
 to overtake him, — that is, taking human probabilities into con- 
 sideration. Let us not, therefore, on the faith of an idle rumour 
 rashly assume — " 
 
 " Idle rumour ! rashly assume ! " cries George in amazement. 
 " Why, it's as well known as the Eoyal Exchange. It's in the 
 second edition of the T/;«es." 
 
 Soapley knows well enough that the intelligence of the catas- 
 trophe is to be found in the second issue of the morning journal. 
 He has seen it perhaps before George; but it is Soapley's 
 policy to deny all the rumours he has heard, and half the news. 
 They may be contradicted, he reckons. There are such things as 
 blunders, false statements, and hoaxes. The very opposite to 
 what has been written or rumoured may be published to-morrow ; 
 and then the parties interested may say, " Such and such a report
 
 382 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 was flying about town, and the only man who wouldn't believe 
 it was Tom Soapley. Shrewd dog!" By which means Thomas 
 hopes, some day, to get made something by somebody. 
 
 There was a considerable admixture of the fabulous in Gaff"- 
 erer's budget of intelligence, and not a tithe of what his idle 
 tongue gave currency to had appeared in the paper ; but in two 
 particulars he was correct. The great house of Groldthorpe was 
 bankrupt, and Magdalen Hill was a beggar.
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 THE TEET OF CLAT. 
 
 The walls of Beryl Court, like those of Balclutha, were deso- 
 late. That feu d'enfer at Sebastopol, of which Menschikoff wrote 
 such rueful accounts to his Emperor, was a mere popgun cannon- 
 ade compared with the devastating bombardment of Bankruptcy. 
 A fiat from Basinghall Street is Like a trumpet, blowing down 
 the walls of Jericho, commercial and financial, in an instant. 
 No pantomimic change that Earley or Bradwell ever dreamt of 
 is half so rapid as that which takes place when a great merchant's 
 house is turned out of windows. 'Tis the old story of Aladdin's 
 palace over again. The inestimable old, albeit rusty, lamp has 
 been incautiously exchanged — beware of people who cry things 
 m the street — for a bran-new, tawdry, utterly worthless affair ; 
 and, presto, away goes palace, and down comes Aladdin, like 
 Humpty Dumpty from the top of his wall. 
 
 It was speedily manifest that not all the king's horses nor all 
 the king's men could ever set Sir ^Jasper Goldthorpe up again. 
 His fall had been too violent ; the Smash was too great. A wise 
 man has said, that the success of the wicked resembles only the 
 progress of some wretch urged towards the summit of the Tar- 
 peian rock to be ruinously flung therefrom. I leave for the 
 moment the question of Mammon's wickedness or virtue in abey- 
 ance. I only look at him as he lies, bleeding, mangled, crushed 
 out of all solvent semblance, at the bottom of the precipice, to 
 the brink of which he clomb so arrogantly. 
 
 "Where Mammon had been only yesterday absolute, — supreme, 
 well-nigh, in his earthly way, and among his earthly vassals 
 omnipotent, — a Messenger in Bankruptcy now held undisputed 
 sway. The Emperor was nowhere. He had been beaten; he 
 had abdicated ; his throne was vacant. The Messenger was the
 
 384 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAM310X. 
 
 Provisional Government. He appointed a provisional ministry, 
 and took provisional command of the remaining finances. Le 
 lioi etait mort ; but the kingly line ^va3 extinct, and there was 
 no new sovereign to shout " Vive le roi ! " for. The Messenger 
 in Bankruptcy was a pleasant man in a Marseilles waistcoat, and 
 with a bald pate so polished, that when he took off his hat the 
 birds might have used his shining occiput for a mirror, and 
 plumed themselves by its reflection. The Messenger netted 
 a comfortable salary of two or three thousand a year by getting 
 other people to execute his messages. He was a high Tory, and 
 spent a portion of his earnings in the maintenance of a moribund, 
 but highly orthodox. Church and State newspaper, of which the 
 last proprietor had been a Unitarian, and the last but one a 
 converted Jew. The Moi'ning Mitre — thus was the Messenger's 
 journal called — has since been sold, the True-Blue Club refusing 
 to advance any more money for its support. It is now edited by 
 a gentleman of Mormon tendencies, and is said to be the sub- 
 sidised organ of the Turkish government, — since the black ambas- 
 sador from Hayti wouldn't have anything to do with it, — but it is 
 as orthodox and as Conservative as ever. 
 
 So the Messenger put his merry men into Beryl Court, and 
 accountants began to range through the extensive library of 
 ledgers, cash-books, journals, and so forth, in which the pro- 
 digious transactions of Goldthorpe and Co. were recorded. I 
 am advancing matters if I speak of meetings for the choice of 
 assignees, certificate discussions, and similar preliminaries to the 
 great five-act drama of fivepence in the pound. I am now but 
 at the morrow of the disaster ; but was it fivepence, or was it 
 nothing at all in the pound, that Goldthorpe's estate, after sevea 
 years' delay, rendered to the creditors ? 
 
 Goldthorpe's estate! That now became the misty, hazy semi- 
 entity into which the countless treasures of Mammon had resolved 
 themselves. Everything now belonged to the " estate," and 
 seemed to wither and grow blighted under the baneful influence 
 of Basinghall Street, The marble fronted palace in Beryl Court 
 seemed suddenly afliicted with the same leprosy that is said to 
 have attacked the stonework of the New Houses of Parliament. 
 Of course the people whose business it was left off" cleaning the
 
 THE FEET OF CLAY. 385 
 
 "windows, sweeping the door-step, and polishing the brass-plate. 
 The muddy highlows of the Messenger's merry men made tesse- 
 lations for themselves on the pavement of the entrance-hall. Bits 
 of straw, — however is it that bits of straw seem indissolubly con- 
 nected with every case in bankruptcy ? — began to be noticed 
 about the Court, and even in offices and ante-chambers. The 
 merry men belonging to the Messenger chewed bits of straw con- 
 tinually. The trim servitors, who were wont to glide about so 
 noiselessly and so obediently on the behests of Mammon and the 
 heads of his departments, suddenly disappeared, and were replaced, 
 no one knew how or wh}^ by an inconceivable female of great but 
 uncertain age, who had a face like an exaggerated Norfolk biffin, 
 and the arrangement of whose costume was after the engraved 
 portrait of Mother Bunch, and whose pattens were perpetual, 
 and who wore a bonnet that may be said to have resembled the 
 design of a Turkey carpet, for it was like nothing in the sky, or 
 upon the earth, or in the waters under them. This phenomenon 
 announced herself to be Mrs. Eunt, laundress, and invariably 
 soiled every article with which she came in contact. She was 
 always sipping half-pints of porter, and always talking vfith inde- 
 corous glibness about the " estate " and the assignees. In all the 
 catastrophes of life, — in childbirth, in bankruptcy, in captivity, in 
 sickness, and in death, — these appalling women start up unbidden, 
 and have dominion almost as great as that claimed by commis- 
 sioners, by turnkeys, by doctors, and by undertakers. AY hen they 
 are not prattling about the " assignees," their theme is the " trus- 
 tees," or the " executors." They are all sisters. Mrs. Eunt 
 pervades Beryl Court, and Mrs. Bunt, when you are sick in cham- 
 bers, administers to you, internally, the liniment instead of the 
 draught. Mrs. Grunt comes to the lying-in, and Mrs. Hunt 
 lays you out. "Were they ever young, these standing protests 
 against the laws on witchcraft ? Had they ever good looks ? 
 Did they ever know what it was to be pretty, and cheerful, 
 and honest, and sober? What were their husbands, if they 
 ever had any, — mutes or dissecting-room porters, or resurrec- 
 tion men, or watchmen ? I think, myself, that they were all 
 born old, that they had the rheumatism in their cradles, and 
 were suckled ou beer and weaned on gin, and that their fathers 
 
 c c
 
 386 THE SETEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 were ail Chelsea pensioners, and their mothers all Tvorkhouse 
 nurses. 
 
 The clerks and other employes of the great Hou3« did not take 
 the ruin of Mammon much to heart. There was something in 
 having belonged to a firm that had smashed for so tremendous an 
 amount. The sage heads of other City firms looked on a man out 
 of Goldthorpe's as one whose experiences had been vast, whose 
 knowledge of monetary ramifications must be prodigious, and who 
 must necessarily be up, not to a thing or two, but to a thing or 
 twenty. So, when the brief notice accorded to them had expired, 
 they readily found other engagements. The heads of departments 
 were as undismayed. One gentleman positively married on the 
 strength of Goldthorpe's bankruptcy. Another, as precautionary 
 measures, immediately increased his tailor's bill, ordered some 
 peculiar port from his wine-merchant, and took a house on a long 
 lease. A third published a book on the History of Great Specu- 
 lations, which had a rapid sale, and obtained for its gifted author 
 the appointment of Secretary of the Imperial Clerical and General 
 Purchase of Pawnbrokers' Duplicates Association (offices in Can- 
 non Street and Pall Mall) ; and one gentleman, more aspiring 
 than the rest, added another horse to his brougham, took a house 
 in Tyburnia, went into business for himself, and was blithely 
 bankrupt at the end of twelve months. He had so closely imitated 
 the system of operations pursued by his great chief, that his Smash 
 was the very image of Mammon's seen through the small end of 
 an opera-glass. 
 
 The fountain in the Court ceased playing of course ; and then it 
 came out how much money was owing to the Water Company, in 
 which Sir Jasper was a shareholder. The scrip, it is needless to say, 
 had been mortgaged for twice its value. Money had been raised 
 upon everything on which it was possible to raise a stiver, — upon 
 title-deeds and dock-warrants, upon bills and cheques, upon bilk- 
 of-sale of phantom furniture, upon shares, and bonds, and bills of 
 lading, and policies of insurance, and reversions, and the contents of 
 Mammon's waste-paper basket generally. The assets, if they could 
 only have been realized, ought to have been enormous. Hundreds 
 of thousands of pounds sterling were owed to Sir Jasper Gold- 
 thoi'pe ; only Brumm Brothers of Pinsbury Circus, and Poulgar
 
 TRE EEET OF CLAY. 387 
 
 and Tyke of Mancliester, and J. C. Whittlesfcool of isow York, 
 and Solomon Eennosey and Co. of Vienna and Trieste, and Jacob 
 van Sclioldup and Nepliews of tlie Hague, and Caikjee, Ferikjee, 
 and Bostandji-Bashi of Constantinople, — those great Greek bank- 
 ers and farmers of the Moldavio-AV^allachian tribute, — all hap- 
 pened to smash up simultaneously with Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, or 
 as earl}--, at least, as the return of post would permit them. None 
 of these reputedly- weal tliy houses had any assets worth speaking 
 of; and people did say that Brumm Brothers never had any' more 
 tangible representatives thaa a very large mahogany desk, and an 
 office-boy at fifteen shillings a week ; that Poulgar and Tyke of 
 Manchester were simply myths ; that J. C. "Whittlestool of New 
 York was a gentleman of the " loafing " persuasion, who, after an 
 unsuccessful speculation in dry goods, had taken to school-teaching, 
 and to lecturing on the Od Force, and to writing epic poems and 
 five-act tragedies, purporting to be the composition of Edmund 
 Spenser and William Shakespeare respectively, for a spirit-rapping 
 circle at Fantombrowski City, Maes, Ugly rumours also got 
 abroad that Solomon Bennosey and Jacob van Seholdup, Com- 
 pany, Nephews, and all, were personages equally fiibulous witli 
 the foregoing; and that Caikjee, Ferikjee, and Bostaudji-Bashi 
 were only petty money-changers in the Grand Eue de Pera. Be 
 it as it may, nothing came out of the stoppage or the, " liqiuda- 
 tion" of these shadowy firms; in fact, they liquidated them- 
 selves so completely that their nanjes migbt have been written ia 
 water. 
 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe was seen no more on his accustomed 
 walk in the Eoyal Exchange. He took his name off the books of 
 the Callipash Club in Old Broad Street. He was oue^of the 
 "Wardens of the Worshipful Company of Battle-axe Makers ; but 
 be did not join that ancient Society at their June feast in Battle- 
 axe Makers' Hall, or drink prosperity to the Company " root and 
 branch." He was to have taken the chair at tbe annual dinner of 
 the Hospital for Elephantiasis ; but declining the honour, for 
 obvious reasons, the indefatigable Secretary, W. E. Y. Noceros, 
 Esq. (subsequently public prosecutor to the Eoyal Society for the 
 Prevention of Cruelty to Fleas, — the post which friendly George 
 Gafferer tried so hard to obtain), succeeded in persuading His 
 
 c 2
 
 888 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Grace the Duke of Clubfoot to officiate as chairman, who, had he 
 not been stone-deaf, and had he not in his speech in advocacy of 
 the claims of the Institution confounded it with the Eoyal Queen- 
 Charlotte Institution for supplying AVet-nurses with Snuff, would 
 have afforded the highest satisfaction to the numerous and dis- 
 tinguished company present. 
 
 It was about this time that Sir Jasper's former chums and 
 associates — if a man so mighty can be said to have ever had chums 
 or associates — were found to turn their heads the other way, or to 
 cross discreetly to the other side of the road, when the ruined 
 man crept by on his way to his lawyers. The cabmen, too, whom 
 he had once held in such awe, now openly scorned him, and would 
 nave over-charged him because he Avas poor, and braved his ire 
 had he remonstrated. The red-nosed and white-aproned ticket- 
 porters, the ward-beadles and turncocks, the hangers-on at City 
 taverns and coffee-houses, even the man who sold dog-collars, 
 pocket-books, and toy copper coal-scuttles and coffee-pots, under 
 the lee of Bow Church and the Poultry Chapel, quite forgot to 
 touch their hats now when the Baronet passed. With that 
 idiosyncrasy peculiar to ruined men, he persisted in hanging about 
 the scenes of his former glories ; — a poor broken-down old Marius, 
 wandering amidst the ruins of a golden Carthage. There was no 
 great need for him to bo seen on the eastern side of Temple Bar. 
 He was not often wanted at his lawyers' or at Basiughall Street ; 
 in fact, they could have got on quite as well there without as with 
 him. But he would hanker after the old scenes ; he would prowl 
 about Beryl Court, and the marts and exchanges where he had 
 been so well known, and where he had achieved in bygone times 
 such triumphant successes. Some of his former companions took 
 it quite ill that he did not absent himself for good and all. He 
 was smashed ; he was done for ; he belonged henceforth to the 
 Court and the Commissioners. What did he want " humbugging" 
 — I use their terms, not mine — about Cheapside and CornhiU ? 
 
 " There's a want of decency in it," quoth one. " He ouglit to 
 know better," said another. "Hain't proper," was the opinion 
 of a third. Joddles, of Joddles and Toddles, Turkey brokers, had 
 a dreadful dream about Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, and told it the 
 next morning, coldly perspiring as he spoke, to a friend. " By
 
 THE FEET OP CLAY. 389 
 
 Jove, sir ! " he said, " T dreamt last niglit of that fellow Gold- 
 thorpe coming to my place, and wanting to borrow half-a-suiFerin 
 of me. And of course I wouldn't lend it to him. And then lie 
 seized me by the throat ; and then he changed into the Rotunda 
 of the Bank of England ; and then I fell into a tureeuful of 
 scalding hot turtle ; and then I woke. Sir, if that man had any 
 sense of decency in him, he'd emigrate." 
 
 The Church had something to say, too, about the luckless 
 wretch. The Keverend Hugh Hango Hollowpenny, who, through 
 Sir Jasper's influence, had been presented to the comfortable 
 living of St.-Pogis-uuder-Pump (resident population thirteen 
 hundred and thirteen, average congregation nine and a half, — the 
 half being a hunch-backed charity-boy), took the ruiued Grold- 
 thorpe as the text for a very neat sermon preached in the ancient 
 church of St. Pogis, the first Suudav after the decline of Mammon. 
 He showed how, even when the ex-millionnaire was a rich man, he 
 had doubtless scorned the beggar in his gate, and sent him disdain- 
 fully the crumbs that fell from his children's table ; whereas now 
 the beggar was an infinitely better man than he, and would go to 
 glory ; — whereas he — but I desist. 
 
 The minor organs of the public press would have been wanting 
 to their high attributes and functions, had they not made a trifling 
 moral capital out of the great catastrophe which had convulsed. 
 the City of London. The money-articles in all the dailies were 
 full of Goldthorpiana for at least a fortnight. Then came two or 
 three stinging leaders, in which it was irrefragably proved that 
 such a system of business as that pursued by Jasper Goldthorpe 
 must inevitably find its culmination in ruin and disgrace, and in 
 which he was likened to John Law, to Rowland Stephenson, and, 
 by implication, to the late Mr. Fauntleroy. The weekly journals 
 teemed with tiny paragraphs, contributed by industrious penny-a- 
 liners, not quite certain on Friday as to where their Sunday's 
 dinner was to come from, and alluding to the Sardanapalian extra- 
 vagance of Sir Jasper, to the wasteful prodigality of the Sous of 
 Mammon, to the Persian splendour of Beryl Court, the Versailles- 
 like magnificence of Onyx Square, and the Arcadian beauty of 
 Goldthorpe Manor. There were little anecdotes, too, about Sir 
 Jasper having been in the habit of purchasing early green peas at
 
 390 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 a guinea a quart, feeding bis horses on Jamaica arrowroot, and 
 cane-bottoming the chairs in bis servants' ball ■witb gold wire. 
 Tortunately Magdalen Hill was only ruined, and was not a 
 gazetted bankrupt, else the minor organs of the press might have 
 had something to say against her as well. 
 
 All these anecdotes and calumnies, all these lies and scandals, 
 Ernest Goldthorpe read in his rectory at Swcrdsley ; — for he had 
 plenty of kind friends to send liim tjie papers, however trashy 
 they were, which contained them ; — all these he perused witb a 
 secret rage and burning shame. There are few things more ter- 
 rible in the eventualities of life than when misfortune creates a 
 grief between parents and their children, — than when inevitable 
 fate abases the sire, and leaves the son honoured and prosperous. 
 Ask my lady yonder who has married a peer, whether she is com- 
 fortable in the knowledge that her poor old mother once kept a 
 grocer's shop, and is still partial to snuif and to ardent spirits. 
 Ask the gallant officer, who has won rank and fame and the Cross 
 of the Bath in far distant lands, how be likes coming home from 
 the East, and finding that his father has failed as a stock-broker, 
 and has taken to the corn-and-coal-commissiou business for a live- 
 lihood. Of course Ernest Goldthorpe, as a son and as a clergy- 
 man, meant to do everything that was proper and generous for his 
 family, when this dreadful crisis was over, and these sad afiairs 
 were arranged ; but, meanwhile, he could not help thinking in his 
 heart of hearts that it would be an exceedingly comfortable thing 
 and an infinite relief if, for some brief period, say six months, his 
 papa and mamma could be relegated to the antipodes, or sunk 
 (without any peril to their lives) at the bottom of the sea.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 AT THE WEST-E2\D. 
 
 It would be difficult to describe with precision the immediate 
 effect which the failure of Sir Jasper Goldthorpe had upon that 
 polite world of which he had been for so long the envj and the 
 ornament. A thunderbolt, an earthquake, a tornado, the explo- 
 sion of a powder-magazine, — all these are, if not vulgar, at least 
 hackneyed images, and will scarcely bear re-quoting when this 
 most gigantic Smash is taken into consideration. The news of 
 Goldthorpe's stoppage was wafted, of course, on a thousand wings 
 through Temple Bar, — another edition came round Newgate Street 
 and Holborn way, — rushed with lightning swiftness up Meet 
 Street, and so to Charing Cross, where, bifurcating, it was trans- 
 mitted, in duplicate, westward to Tyburnia and southward to Bel- 
 gravia. Consternation, amazement, rage, mortificatiou, — all these 
 feelings were certainly experienced by the polite world on the 
 receipt of the disastrous intelligence ; but with regard to any sen- 
 timent of pity, sorrow, condolence, or compassion, my information 
 is by no means so exact. The polite world felt, in the first place, 
 naturally vexed and humiliated at the collapse of a sumptuous 
 Entity to whom they had so long bowed the knee, whom, together 
 with its belongings, they had courted, flattered, not to say besla- 
 vered with adulation ; to whose feasts they had rejoiced to be 
 bidden ; in whose sunsliine they had basked ; and in whose tem- 
 poral Eternity — for many persons, gross as seems the paradox, do 
 positively believe that Eiches will last for ever — they had reposed 
 so strong a faith ; and Su' Jasper Goldthoi-pe, they argued, had 
 no right to set himself up as a rich man, since the foundations of 
 his formidably gigantic fortune were, after all, built upon a quick- 
 sand. Eor the polite Avorld, as a rule, profess to be entirely 
 ignorant of the fluctuations of financial and commercial specula-
 
 892 THE SEVEN SOxNS OF MAMMON. 
 
 tions. The polite world screeclies in agony when their banker 
 breaks, or their stock-broker runs away, and want to hang all 
 Lombard Street, and all Capel Court immediately. They say 
 they can't understand panics and hard times, and so forth. Their 
 only notion of a firm tangible fortune is one that consists of snug^ 
 dividends upon Bank or India Stock, on bonds and rent-charges, 
 and especially on national pensions ; and so long as the Bank of 
 England doesn't break, and the British Government still holds its 
 own, they imagine that their fortunes must necessarily be secure. 
 Thus, while in the City Sir Jasper Goldthorpe was looked upon 
 as a simply unfortunate man who had gone a little too fast, over- 
 traded, and had found at last things turn out badly, he was 
 regarded at the AVest End, and by the impulsive polite world, as 
 little short of a swindler. They had no patience with him. This, 
 forsooth, was the financier worth millions, the man made of 
 money, the auriferous oligarch who could buy and sell half the 
 Peerage, who had been made a baronet because he was so rich, 
 and was to be made a peer because he was growing richer. This 
 was the Idol to whom all had bowed down; whose feasts were 
 like those of Marly in the reign of the Grand Monarque ; wliose 
 daughters, had he possessed any, might have wedded with princes ; 
 who was, in fact. Mammon, and in consequence to be worshipped, 
 and made much of, so long as he would shower gold about him. 
 Now he was down. ISTow his fortune turned out to be a myth, 
 and his riches not worth a peck of cowries. Of course the polite 
 world were shocked, irritated, and mortified that they had been 
 deceived; and, equally of course, their just suspicions, which they 
 had entertained for a very long period, — only twenty-four hours 
 sincfe they had been caressing Mammon's shoe-strings ! — were 
 only verified. They had always thought how it would end. There 
 was always something suspicious, louclie, about this man. He 
 never looked you in the face. He was evidently, and had been 
 for a long time, tormented by the stings of conscience. And 
 finally, drawing a neat and genteel moral from the downfall of 
 this rich man, who had so wickedly proved to be poorer than Job, 
 the polite world bade its admirers, dependents, toadies, and 
 hangers-on take warning by the fate of the Goldthorpes, beware 
 in future of these City sharpers and adventurers, and mark the
 
 AT THE -WEST-END. 893 
 
 results whicli followed the encouragement and the admlsaion into 
 society of mere plebeians ; for akhough Sir Jasper Goldthorpe's 
 name was in Burke and in Debrett, and he had a handle to his 
 name, and a bloody hand in his escutcheon, he had not been two 
 days bankrupt ere the polite world found out that ho was of the 
 meanest possible extraction, and, not many years ago, had kept a 
 shop in a little country town. 
 
 This is the way of the world, and has been these thousand 
 years ; and there is small use, perliaps, in moralising upon it. To 
 hit a man when he is down, and find ovit that the wretch who 
 stands convicted of murder has committed half-a-dozen desperate 
 assassinations in addition to the one for whicli he is to be hanged 
 next Monday : to throw a stone at the drowning man, and trip up 
 the lame dog that is trying to get over the style ; to declare that 
 "the woman who has made one false step has tumbled down a 
 whole flight of stairs" (as a great wit once said); to swear, 
 because a man wears a wig, that his teeth are false and his mous^ 
 taches dyed ; to give unto him who has plenty, and to take away 
 from him who has nothing ; — we say that we don't do these things, 
 and brand as cynics and man-haters those who declare that we 
 do. But we do them, nevertheless, and, in ourselves, glory in 
 them, every day. 
 
 Courtly Doctor Sardonix was inexpressibly shocked by the 
 catastrophe which had laid desolate Beryl Court and Onyx 
 Square. It M-as a terrible blow to him, almost as severe as 
 though he had been put down in consultation before a third party 
 who was an enemy, or as though some beautiful duchess whom he 
 had been attending for the tooth-ache had died. The worst 
 of the matter was, that there was no denying it. Ton cannot 
 quite ignore the sun at noonday. The courteous Doctor did his 
 best for a few hours to shufile, and evade, and stall off the awful 
 truth w4th discreet shrugs and simpers ; but when the ]Messenger 
 (how sorry I am to learn on the authority of Mr. Commissioner 
 Goulbourn, tliat the salary of that ill-used functionary has been 
 reduced to the paltry stipend of five hundred a year — a mere 
 catchpole's wage) — when the Messenger, travelling westward, as 
 well as the evil news, put in an appearance in Onyx Square, and 
 laid his hand on all that the House of Mammon contained, it
 
 S94 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 was time for Doctor Sardonix to speak out, and to express Mmself 
 on a concern about which the whole polite world were talking as 
 a Man and a physician. He comported himself, as usual, with 
 exquisite discretion. He had nothing to say against the fallen 
 man. 
 
 " The soul of liberality, my dear sir ! " he repeated everywhere. 
 " Just and upright in all his dealings, so far as your humble 
 servant is concerned. Let us have some Christian charity. Let 
 as not break the bruised reed. He erred, it may be, — erred from 
 «xcess of energy and enterprise ; but who is not liable to error ? 
 Hv/manum est errarey 
 
 This was the pleasing refrain of the physician's song. There is 
 something to be got even out of toadying the unfortunate. The 
 Doctor's present reward was to be called a good kind soul ; and 
 to hear on every side rumours that, contrary to the usual exigent 
 etiquette of the profession, he had allowed the Goldthorpe family 
 to run in his debt for hundreds of fees. His hope of future 
 guerdon lay, perhaps, in the bare possibility that, some day or 
 another, some member of the Goldthorpe family might hold his 
 head up again, and, by his bounty, recall the gladsome days when 
 he scarcely ever met a Goldthorpe without having his smooth 
 palm crossed with gold. 
 
 1 am bound to admit that Doctor Sardonix refrained (purely 
 •through motives of delicacy) from leaving his card at the house of 
 the ruined family, and that Zenobia his spouse " improved the 
 occasion," as the diplomatists say, to make the Goldthorpe bank- 
 ruptcy a frequent text for exhortations to her family and friends 
 on the pomps and vanities of earthly things, and the sinfulness of 
 a mere reliance on perishable dross. A good many of the neigh- 
 bouring clergy, orthodox and heterodox, also, " improved the 
 occasion," as that other reverend gentleman had done at the 
 East-End, even as they improved all other occasions, — wars, 
 tumults, pestilences, famines, and railway-accidents, to suit the 
 stops on their own particular barrel-organs. Bolsover, M.P., was 
 neutral. He remarked that Goldthorpe might ha\-e played his 
 cards better. This was in the lobby of the House. In the Park, 
 hearing further details of the Smash, he opined that Sir Jasper 
 had brought his pigs to a fine market ; and after dinner, at the
 
 AT THE WEST-END. 395 
 
 Club, between bis rubbers, be observed that be didn't see bow Gr. 
 Avas to get out of the mess. But Bolsover was always a man of 
 strong common sense, dealing in platitudes wbicb everybody 
 could understand. He is sure to be a Lord of tbe Treasury some 
 day. 
 
 Tbe great West-End lawyers looked at tbe tragedy pbilosopbi- 
 cally, aud only regretted tbat tbey were not for tbe nonce East- 
 End lawyers, and tbat they migbt bave sometbing to do witb tbe 
 case and tbe assigness. " Tbere'll be pretty pickings on tbat 
 estate, sir," Deedes (Deedes, Eerret, and 'Wax, Old Cavendisb 
 Street) remarked to Probate, of Bedford Eow: in wbicb tbe 
 latter acquiesced, adding tbat if tbe case were in bis bands, be 
 would put balf-a-dozen extra clerks on bis establisbment on tbe 
 mere strengtb of it ; and, quotb wicked old Mr. Jebosbopbat, of 
 Sfc, James's Place, — tbat terrible, terrible limb of tbe law, wbo 
 was reputed to bave made a buudred and ten thousand pounds 
 out of four bankruptcies, and to bave patented a machine for tbe 
 legal grinding of widows' and orphans' faces, — said tbis most 
 redoubtable of solicitors, — a man who seemed to labour under a, 
 natural incapacity for being for you in a cause, and was always, 
 and, as a matter of course, against you, suing you horribly, and 
 selling you up at all hours of tbe day and night, in term and out 
 of term, — " Since Bulgrummer's affair (tbe East Swindiesbury 
 Bank- and Universal "Wind-winnowing Company), there hasn't 
 been, within my recollection (and I'm sixty-nine, sir), a bank- 
 ruptcy with more meat upon it." 
 
 Mr. Plumer Eavenbury — who may certainly be said to bave 
 belonged to the polite world, inasmuch as it was bis function to 
 conduct so many polite worldlings out of it — received tbe news 
 with a soft sigh. He consulted his books, and found tbat tbe 
 funeral of Hugh Jasper Goldthorpe bad been paid for at tbe 
 exj)iration of the customary year of grace, and that not one of tbe 
 costly items bad been disputed by tbe family. So Ae bad nothing 
 to say against Mammon. Besides, Plumer was a disciple of tbe 
 school of Dr. Sardonix ; and tbe two played into each other's 
 bands much oftener than was imagined, although quite uncon- 
 sciously, perhaps. Undertakers are hereditary retainers of the 
 poor as well as tbe rich ; and if you, or any of your ancestors,
 
 396 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 have ever paid tbem a good long bill without questioning any of 
 the charges, they Avill go on burying you and your descendants 
 until the crack of doom. But once let a tray of feathers be 
 quibbled at, or a silken scarf objected to, and your undertaker 
 repudiates you, and is of opinion that you or your representatives 
 — yourself being out of court — had better go to some cheap 
 Funeral Company or advertising person. Every man, to the 
 meanest, has his Boswell, I have been told, and — it is a very 
 dreadful thing to think of — his undertaker, also a sable little 
 cherub who sits down below, and looks out for the death of poor 
 Jack Pudding. 
 
 The Bosuns (Admiral Bosun), neighbours of ]Mammon in Onyx 
 Square, had never known the Goldthorpes. They were glad and 
 tlianhf'ul now, yes, thankful. Admiral Bosun, that they had been 
 spared the disgrace and contamination of contact with those 
 unwortliy people. And Miss Magdalen Hill was ruined too, was 
 she ? No good ever came out of such wicked, wicked pride as 
 hers. The Bosuns were not to be appeased by what they termed 
 the shameful backsliding of their neighbours. Tou will generally 
 find that the people whom you have never ofiended will never for- 
 give you. Old Mrs. Twizzle, from Maida Hill, was furious 
 against the whole Goldthorpe race. She was a wealthy but not 
 well-educated woman, and spoke of them, with more force than 
 elegance, as " a pack of trumpery rubbage." That gloomy 
 spinster, Miss Ashtarotb, from the Harrow Eoad, moaned much 
 over the abasement of pride, and the trampling under foot of the 
 disdainful man. She made reference to Dives ; she quoted Job ; 
 and if that patriarch had been afflicted with any female friends. 
 Miss Ashtaroth, for a surety, would have been one of them. She 
 too " improved the occasion," according to her lights ; and being 
 the authoress of that suggestive volume of poetry (privately 
 printed) entitled " The Hatchment," — there are some powerful 
 verses, too, in "The Pall with the Patched Lining," although 
 that last-named work is still in MS., — she sat down to write some 
 album-verses on the misfortunes of the people she had never met. 
 I think she commenced one powerful apostrophe with " How are 
 the mighty fallen ! " but being reminded by " too partial friends " 
 that somebody had given utterance to the same sentiments on a
 
 AT THE WEST-END. 397 
 
 previous occasion, she began anew, " Mammon, Mammon ! tbou 
 art not as tliou hast been ! " when, finding that she had uncon- 
 sciously paraphrased a certaia Felicia Hemans, and that, more- 
 over, her first line wouldn't scan with her second, she abandoned 
 poesy for the nonce, made a pilgrimage to Kensal Green, medi- 
 tated some occasional lines on Hugh Jasper Goldthorpe's tomb, 
 and, on her return, gave warning to her maid Yamter, and 
 severely chastised her poodle for eating black sealing-wax — a 
 refreshment to which that pampered animal was much addicted. 
 
 Hawksley, E.N., albeit devoted to the Bosuns, — he has been 
 engaged to all the girls in succession, and it is hoped may still 
 make a good end of it when Mrs. xidmiral becomes a widow, — 
 behaved very well under the circumstances. He said that Gold- 
 thorpe didn't owe him any money, and that he used to give very 
 capital dinners and very jolly parties ; that the old woman, 
 meaning Lady Goldthorpe, was a trump ; and that if he wasn't 
 a poor devil of a sea-captain on half-pay, he would lend him some 
 money, he would. Chewke, late of Riga, instructed Chipp, his 
 body-servant, to purchase the Times for him every morning until 
 the proceedings in Goldthorpe's bankruptcy were terminated. 
 He could not wait for the City article and the Basinghall 
 Street record until it was time for him to take his noontide walk 
 to the Union Club, He read all about the choice of assignees, 
 and the proof-of-debts meetings, over hot pigeon-pie, on which 
 he had lately taken to bi'eakfasting in bed. Gryggor, the joker, 
 was taciturn and morose on the whole subject. It is probable 
 that he was nursing a store of facetiiB and conundrums against 
 the unhappy Baronet's hanging himself or Lady Goldthorpe's 
 dying of a broken heart. Lord Groomporter drowned his grief 
 in " braiorsoawarr," and, in the excess of exhilaration caused by 
 that stimulant, made up his mind to offer marriage to Magdalen 
 Hill. On taking plain soda-water the next morning he thought 
 better of his resolve, and instructed his man-servant to procure 
 him devilled kidneys, with plenty of cayenne, for his breakfast 
 at 2"30. Lord Carnation — the truth must be told — ran away. 
 At least, he found it convenient to pass over for a season to a 
 cheap German Spa, where his chaplain wrote pamphlets in the 
 morning, and played at trente et quarantc in the evening, Lord
 
 398 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Carnation cramming himself meanwhile from the German news- 
 papers. In the Teutonic language his lordship was, I need not 
 say, a proficient. He knew almost every word, and didn't under- 
 stand, half-a-dozen, in it. "Why did Lord Carnation run away ? 
 The truth, must again be told ;_ and I am afraid that the Noble 
 Childe departed this country in sore dismay, and extreme terror 
 lest the Groldthorpes and their connections might want to borrow 
 money, or seek some favour at his hands. " One can never tell 
 what may happen, you know," he said candidly to his chaplain. 
 " Old man may want to get into the Charterhouse, or old woman 
 may turn begging-letter-writer. There's that gii-1 too. Fool she 
 was to trust old man with her money ! I wonder whether that 
 little Mrs. Armytage lost anything by him. Bather too knowing, 
 I should think." From w^hich it may be inferred that the Earl 
 of Carnation, although intellectually a ninny, was not deficient 
 in worldly wisdom. 
 
 And those ruined cast-out men and women, — where were they ? 
 In Onyx Square ? No ; the Messenger and his merry men were 
 fast in possession there. At Goldthorpe Manor — that marvel of 
 a place ? No ; there also the Messenger and his merry men wer© 
 chiefs and suzerains over park and terrace, over woods and 
 forests, over rosery and drapery, over vert and venison, over 
 chamber and hall, wherein beards by no means merrily wagged, 
 but rather men of brokerlike aspect confabulated over their 
 inevitable pewter measures of porter. AVe have all heard of the 
 noble bard who awoke one morning to find himself famous. 
 Edmond Malone, the critic, used to say that he went to bed in 
 one street and woke the next day in another — the name of the 
 thoroughfare in which he resided having been changed from 
 Queen- Anne Street East to Eoley Place. It is not agreeable to 
 go to bed hale and hearty and to wake in a raging fever,, or with 
 your limbs shackled by sciatica. There may be pleasaoiter things 
 than to iiiid your morning pillow guarded by alguazils ; or to read 
 in the damp news-sheet that yoxiv last night's farce, which you 
 were too nervous to witness in person, was signally damned ; or 
 to learn, through the same medium, that the Trans-Caucasian 
 Bailways, in which you have invested a few thousands, and which 
 have been so long at a glowing premium, are down to three and
 
 AT THE WEST-END. 399 
 
 an eighth discount ; or that — n. mere on dit this — a marriage is 
 on the tapis between acme wretch in the Guards and the peerless 
 beauty with whom you were waltzing and flirting on the previous 
 evening. These are the kicks which Fortune gives us as she 
 passes ; but the sorest, cruellest buffet that she can have in store 
 for ua is sui*ely to retire to rest honoured and rich, and to rise 
 up in the morning disgraced and a beggar. 
 
 So had it been with each and every one of the pampered 
 children of Mammon. The Brazen Idol himself must have lonij 
 foreseen the blow — must have felt his clay feet tottering and 
 crumbling beneath him ; — but They ! It was all over in a 
 moment. Onyx Square, Goldthorpe Manor, treasures, honours-, 
 dignitie?, alliances, friendships, luxuries, whims and caprices, — 
 all faded away " like the breath from off the mirror," and " like 
 the foam from off the sea," and like the shadow of the shadow of 
 smoke. 
 
 Persian splendour and Assyrian magnificence speedily resolved 
 themselves into a mean lodging in Praed Street, Paddington. 
 They were still of Tyburnia, you see, even as the dwellers of 
 Pimlico purlieus are close upon Belgravia ; but what a gulf 
 between Praed Street and the proud Square ! The rent was, 
 I think, five-and-tweuty sliillings a week : parlours, of course, — 
 poor people always choose parlours to live in, — with a landlady 
 who had seen better days, and grumbled because there was 
 nothing to steal She had found out all about her guests before 
 they had been six hours in her house ; and looked sharply after 
 her rent on the ensuing Saturday, you maybe sure. In this 
 narrow crib, with a lady professor of the pianoforte — terms one- 
 and-sixpence an hour — over head ; with a tailor, not too rarely- 
 inebriated, above that, and a pack of howling children perpetually 
 executing gymnastic feats on the staircase, and settling their 
 little differences in the passage, — were content to abide Sir 
 Jasper and Lady Goldthorpe and Magdalen Hill. Por the first 
 time in her life that young lady became acquainted with the 
 price of potatoes, and learned what the tongue of a coarse, 
 violent, ignorant, envious, and gossiping lodging-house keeper 
 was like. Por Captain William Goldthorpe, and on the very 
 morrow of his father's bankruptcy, apartments of a more ex- 
 
 ^'
 
 400 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 pensive, but of a less agreeable, nature had been found. That 
 unhappy officer of cavalry was arrested at early morn at a friend's 
 chambers, where he thought himself perfectly free from pursuit, 
 and conveyed by Mr. IMorris Hyams, officer to the Sheriff of 
 Middlesex, assisted by Mr. Melphibosheth Hashbaz, his retainer 
 and follower, to the lock-up of Mr. Nebuchadnezzar Barney- 
 winkle, in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where, at the trifling 
 outlay of a guinea a day, he was indulged in the luxury of a 
 private room, well-nigh as dirty as a dog-kennel, and not much 
 bigger than a bird-cage. The Captain was only " took," to use 
 Mr. Hyam's locution, on four executions, — three bill-discounters' 
 and a military tailor's ; but ere he had been an hour in hold the 
 detainers against him came pouring in like applications for the 
 office of common hangman, when that post happens to be vacant 
 (there were seventy-seven last time) ; and by two in the afternoon 
 the Captain was "to the bad for two-and-twenty thou," as Mr. 
 Barneywinkle cheerfully observed to Mr. Hyams, thereby mean- 
 ing twenty-two thousand pounds. William Goldthorpe had 
 plenty of squander-cash friends, who were only too happy to 
 supply him with the necessary guineas for his rent, which, with 
 admirable promptitude and punctuality, was always exacted in 
 advance. He could have set up a cigar-shop with the stock of 
 choice Eegalias, and packets of Milo's honey-dew tobacco, which 
 were daily forwarded to him by sympathising friends in the 
 Household Brigade, the Line, and the Artillery. Hampers of 
 wine were continually sent to the captive, much to the disgust 
 of Mr. Nebuchadnezzar Barneywinkle, whose pleasure and profit 
 it was to supply vinous and alchoholic beverages from his own 
 cellars to the lambs in his fold ; but who found consolation in 
 taking toll on the Captain's wine, at so much per cork, as it 
 passed through his grated wicket. Also, there were plenty of 
 young men, with the longest of legs and of moustaches, and the 
 largest of whiskers, who were glad to come and sit with AVilly 
 Goldthorpe during the permitted hours, — to abuse his creditors, 
 to cheer him up, to recount to him the latest sporting intelligence 
 fresh from JBelVs Life, to smoke and drink, and occasionally take 
 a friendly hand at loo or vingt'un with him. All this certainly 
 made a sunshine in the very shady place of Cursitor Street ; but
 
 AT THE WEST-:^ND. 401 
 
 •wine and cigars and cards, and the odds on tlie Leger, -won't pay 
 two-and-tvventy thousand pounds' Avorth of debt. Jack Butts 
 told Willy so plainly. Jack Butts Avas always saying cruel 
 things, and doing kind actions. He owed more money than any 
 man of his means (which were nil) in London. His creditors 
 despaired of, but were fond of him. " AVliat's the good of suing 
 Captain Jack ? " such a one would urge ; " he's stood godfather 
 to all the sheriff's officers' children; and they always turn the 
 blind side to him when he passes." AVhen Jack Butts went to 
 a bill-discounter with a piece of stamped paper for negotiation, 
 the usurer would say, " No, Jack ; we've had quite enough of 
 your blessed signature at three months ; but if you want a ten- 
 pun' note in a friendly way, here it is, and welcome." "He 
 owes me a cool hundred, the capting does," observed Mr. Chev- 
 ron, tailor, of Xew Burlington Street ; " but if he'd only promise 
 to drop in sometimes of a Suuday, and take a bit of dinner on 
 the quiet at my little place at Porest Hill, I'd write his name off 
 my ledger to-morrow. That man's conversation over a bottle of 
 the right sort is worth forty shillings in the pound alone." Jack 
 Butts was a man of the world, and could give good advice to 
 anybody but himself. 
 
 "It's a bad job, Willy," he remarked in Cursitor Street, " and 
 no mistake, and it can't be squared. The Philistines have made 
 you sing comic songs at three months' date quite long enough, my 
 boy ; and it's time to pull Stamp Castle down upon their heads. 
 You've gone to smash, and your governor's gone to smash, and 
 except that Basinghall Street lies to the east of Temple Bar, and 
 Portugal Street to the west, I don't see much difference between 
 the two. You must go over to the Bench, old fellow, and order a 
 pail of whitewash. As you owe such a precious lot, I don't think 
 it will go very hard with you. If you were a poor devil owing a 
 couple of hundred or so, you'd be sure to be remanded for six 
 months. You'd have to stand the Commissioner's bullying. I've 
 stood it. It didn't turn my hair gray. It isn't so bad as a 
 wigging from the Chief on a field da3^ And then you'll come 
 out as clean as a new pin ; and we must set you up as a ' vet.,' or 
 a commission-agent, or a riding-master at Brightou, or a billiard- 
 marker, or something genteel and easy in that line; and if von 
 
 B D
 
 402 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 want a fiver towards lielping you to file your scliedule, you've 
 only to say the word to Jack Butts, and if lie can't beg it, he'll 
 borrow it ; and if he can't borrow it, he'll steal it." 
 
 These were not, perhaps, the words of strict morality, but they 
 were decidedly the words of worldly wisdom, and "William Gold- 
 thorpe did not fail to lay them well to heart. It would have 
 been well, perhaps, for the forlorn circle in Praed Street, Pad- 
 dingtou, if they had found comforters as practical. But they 
 bad none. Sir Jasper had ever been a shy and reticent man, and 
 those whom he had shunned in his prosperity shunned him now in 
 bis adversity. With the polite v/oi'ld the family had clearly 
 nothing more to do. The polite portals were closed against them, 
 even if they had chosen to knock thereat, and they were ostracised 
 in perpetuity from the sacred precincts. This was truly hard, 
 but perhaps necessary, and certainly salutary. Not that they 
 were entirely destitute of friends. Some old clients to whom 
 Mammon had been generous from his abundant store, some old 
 servants who remembered what good living, and what comfortable 
 quarters they had enjoyed in the old time, were anxious to do 
 their former master and mistress such services as lay in their 
 power. Gratitude is not quite dead in the world ; if it were, it 
 would be as well for us to go and live in a pit full of devils. 
 
 Lady Goldthorpe "bore up "• — she used the expression herself 
 — far better than had been expected. Perhaps it was that the good 
 woman found herself once more in an element familiar, and, to a 
 certain extent, comfortable to her. She fretted little ; she 
 repined not at all. 61; e was cheerful. She called her husband 
 " Goldie," as in the old days, and strove to cheer him up. She 
 cooked him nice little dishes, and tried to persuade him to take 
 suppers, and something warm after it. 
 
 " There's nothing like supper," said simple Lady Goldthorpe 
 "for a' wounded heart. Don't you remember what nice little 
 suppers we used to have, years and years ago, when we were in 
 those [little dilBculties about Mr. D. ? Poor Mr. D., I wonder 
 what became of him ! Do have a rump-steak and kidney pud- 
 ding at ten, Goldie." 
 
 ^ The Baronet shuddered at the word " difficulties." " They exist 
 still, Maria," he remarked gloomily.
 
 AT THE WEST-END. 403 
 
 " Oh, nonsense ! " Lady Goldtliorpe continued, " that bother- 
 ation of a bankruptcy can't last for ever. Why, wasn't Pybus, 
 in our town, bankrupt over and over again, and didn't he always 
 get over it ? He always seemed to be better off after he had 
 failed for a good lot. You can pay something in the pound, can't 
 you, Goldie?" 
 
 " I don't know: perhaps I may; perhaps not a penny." 
 
 " AVell, if you can't, you can't — that's positive. Blood can't be 
 got out of a stone. They can't hang you, Goldie, for being 
 unfortunate." 
 
 " JS'o ; but they can " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I*f ever mind what," Sir Jasper cried, in an agonising voice. 
 "They can do that to me which would bring ruin — utter ruin — 
 on me, and disgrace on all our children." 
 
 " Euin and disgrace ! " 
 
 " Yes, Maria. There is one dreadful secret I have never con- 
 fided to you, — to YOU, my own true Avife, the companion of my 
 early poverty, and in whose bosom I have reposed all my cares 
 and troubles, — all but this terrible one, which now hangs over me 
 and threatens to crush me." 
 
 " Jasper Goldthorpe," his wife said, with something like dignity 
 in her homely way, '' to me you have always been a good and 
 faithful husband ; to me you have always acted as an honest man. 
 AVhv should I think that vou would do the thins: that isn't ri^ht 
 to others? "When one's a rogue at home, one's generally a 
 rogue abroad. Come now, Goldie dear, tell me what it's all 
 about." 
 
 " I cannot, I dare not, Maria. I should blush to do so. I 
 tremble to speak about the awful thing, for fear that the very 
 walls might have ears." 
 
 " AYalls have ears. Sir Jasper," a voice close behind the baronet 
 said ; " and so have people behind parlour-doors ; and pretty sharp 
 ones, too." 
 
 The voice belonged to Kloe and Co., of Coger's Inn ; the voice 
 belonged to Mr. Sims, of London, Paris, and the world generally. 
 And Mr. Sims had knocked a soft rat-tat at the street-door, while 
 the bankrupt baronet and his wife were in conversation, — Ma^- 
 
 D D 2
 
 404 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 dalen was away — gone in quest of work, she liad said, in lier proud 
 way, — and after a brief parley on the door-mat, ending with h?s 
 slipping a five-shilling piece into the landlady's hand, — a great 
 outlay for the usuall}^ economical Mr. Sims, — he had been peif- 
 mitted to remain in ambush for a few minutes in the narrow little 
 passage ; had doubtless — thanks to a flimsy lodging-house parloui- 
 door and his sharp ears — heard the concluding part of the col- 
 loquy between Sir Jasper and Lady Goldthorpe, and now entered 
 the room, cool, conlideut, and suggestive of no science being to 
 him a mystery. 
 
 But when Lady Goldthorpe turned round at the entrance of 
 the unexpected visitor, it was not as Mr. Sims or as Mr. Filoe 
 that she addressed him. She stared at him in blank amazement; 
 she suppressed a rising shriek, and lifting up her hands, and sink- 
 ing into her chair, the good woman murmured, "Hugh Des- 
 borough, uiy husband's old partner, by all that's wonderful! "
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 THE AQO^'T OF FLOEENCE AEMTTAGE : STAGE THE FIEST. 
 
 A BEiQHT day iu Paris is, perhaps, the brightest that can be 
 seen anywhere in the world ; and it was the brightest, the sun- 
 niest, and the cheeriest that Lutetia had known for many months 
 — this June morning. It was so bright that the sun turned the 
 crooks of the rag-pickers into gold, and tipped with silver the 
 strips of iron, and fragments of saucepan-lids, and nails, and boot- 
 beels twinkling in their baskets. It was so bright that the 
 Morgue, that gruesome dead-house, looked quite classical and 
 picturesque, — a little temple of antiquity, with the ashes of dead 
 heroes inside, instead of a dank and dismal charnel-place, where 
 the livid corpses lie on the stone slabs, a wonder and a horror to 
 the sight-seers. It was so briglit tl)at the bayonets of a regiment 
 of infantry marching down the Eue de Rivoli flashed and glittered 
 in the sunlight like a clievaux-de-frise of diamonds. Of course the 
 nursemaids in the Palais Eoyal, and the plump Normandy nurses 
 outside the Cafe de Paris, took advantage of the occasion to hire 
 chairs at two sous an hour, and sun themselves, with their young 
 charges, to t)ie admiration of all passers-by, especially the red- 
 legged warriors attached to the garrison at Paris. Of course the 
 little girls in the great quadrangle of the Palace aforesaid, and in 
 the Tuileries Gardens, — those wonderful little Parisian children 
 •with scragged-up hair, vaudyked trousers, black-silk pinafores, 
 who are coquettes in their cradles, and flirts in their leading, 
 strings, — availed themselves of the sunshine to indulge in more 
 than ordinarily graceful and elaborate gymnastic exercises as con- 
 nected with the skipping-rope. Of course while they skipped 
 they looked round for the customary murmur of applause never 
 denied, and quite as gratifying to their little eyes and ears, 
 whether it proceeded from the toothless old gentlemen sipping
 
 406 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 their morning coffee, and reading their tiny rags of newspapers 
 outside the Cafe da la Eotonde, or from the ingenuous provincials 
 in blouses, sabots, and red-tasselled nightcaps, who were loitering 
 about to see the Gruard paraded, and the sun-dial cannon fired by 
 Phoebus' rays at high noon. It was so bright and sunny, that 
 the five hundred thousand ladies and gentlemen who have nothing 
 to do in Paris all tlie year round began to <3o it with all their 
 minds and with all tlieir strength, — that the rattling of dominoes, 
 the clinking of glasses, the clattering of billiard-cues, the shufiling 
 of cards, began to be heard an hour earlier than usual, — and that 
 the fumes of prematurely matutinal cigars curled blue in the 
 morning sunshine from at least two hundred and fifty thousand 
 pairs of happy idle lips. It was so bright and sunny, that you 
 forgot the beggars, with their rags and their sores, on the Pavis 
 Notre-Dame, and the steps of St. Eoche (ye beggars, ye have 
 been swept away under the Imperial dispensation !), — that you 
 forgot the gutters, and tlie discordant cries of the old-clothes 
 men, and the dust and ashes which the house-porters persisted in 
 sweeping over your clean boots, — that you forgot there was 3 
 great deal of want, and a great deal of misery, and a great deal of 
 vice, a great deal of crime, in this teeming city of Paris. Sol 
 lucet omnibus. The sun made amends for all. The sun made the 
 beggar rich, and bade the cripple forget his hurts, and the para- 
 lytic that he was bed-ridden, and the debtor that he was in Clichy, 
 and the pickpocket that the spies were on his track, and the gamirf 
 that his dinner was problematical, and the sempstress that she 
 was making shirts for forty sous a dozen. The sun was meat to 
 the famished, and drink to those who were athirst, and lodging to 
 the houseless. So it must have been in all times, T fancy, in this 
 wonderful city, whose dark shadows only looked the blacker by 
 the dazzling sunshine which contrasts with them. Tliere must 
 have been sunny mornings during the Eeign of Terroi', when 
 Hobespierre enjoyed his breakfast and Fouquier-Tinville smiled, 
 when the procession of the tumbrils down the Eue St.-Honort? 
 must have looked quite a glittering pageant ; and the sun must 
 have shone so on the red guillotine, on the Place of the Revolu- 
 tion, that you could scarcely distinguish it from a galante show in 
 the neighbouring Elysian fields.
 
 THE AGONY OP FLORENCE ARMYTAGE. 407 
 
 Sol lucef omnibus. Everywhere the sun shone, and for all ; — 
 for the Ministers of the Eepublic in their cabinets ; for the 
 students in the taverns and cofl'ee-houses of the Latin Quarter ; 
 for the grisettes in their garrets, the soldiers in their barracks, 
 the mountebanks in their booths, the great dames of the Faubouro' 
 St.- Germain in their boudoirs, the artieans in their workrooms, 
 the cobblers and umbrella-menders in their underground cabins. 
 The sun brought many innocent youths, between the ages of six 
 and twelve, in the divers schools and colleges at Paris, to grief, 
 prompting them as it did to catch its rays in burning-glasses, and 
 so perforate copybooks supplied to them by their pastors and 
 masters. Tes, the sun shone in all places and for all, save in the 
 tomb and for its inmates. There all was dark enough, as usual. 
 In two notable places it shone this morning in the month of June. 
 !First it streamed gallantly and defiantly into a splendid suite of 
 rooms in the E.ue Grande-des-Petites-Maisons, and through a 
 stained casement into a sumptuous little boudoir, and upon a man 
 lolling on a luxurious ottoman, and who was dressed to all sub- 
 stantial seeming in, plain burgess's apparel, but who figuratively, 
 and curiously enough, wore his heart upon his sleeve. 
 
 Our old friend Simon Lefranc ! the genial, airy, volatile child 
 of Gaul (was he a child of Gaul?); the ex-commercial traveller 
 in the corset-trade ; the ex-denizen of the Monmouth Chambers, 
 Soho ; the ex-paillasse who had looked through the coffee-room 
 window ; the ex-dandy who had met witli Inspector Millament 
 and Sergeant South on the Bridge of "Waterloo ; the ex-Count 
 Somebody, in curly black wig, who had been so welcome a guest 
 at the entertainment of the Baroness de la Haute Gueuse ; the 
 present Papa Lallouet; — Simon Lefranc, call him what you 
 will. 
 
 Simon was quite at home, a man of the world ; and in it he 
 could accommodate himself to any circumstances in life ; but the 
 present were, to tell truth, somewhat snug, somewhat cozy, not 
 to say luxurious circumstances. Simon never exceeded, he was 
 too wary for that, but he certainly enjoyed himself thoroughly. 
 A nice succulent little breakfast was laid out before him. The 
 remains of some truffled turkey, the crust of a slice of Strasbourg 
 pie, the bones of some cutlets, some oyster-shells warranted
 
 408 THE SEVEN SONS OF IIAMMON. 
 
 Ostend, a champagne-cork, and the lees of a riglit good bottle of 
 Chambertin, showed that he had known during the last half-hour 
 how to appreciate the good things of this life. And now Simon's 
 dend tasse, and Simon's petit verre, had been brought him by an 
 obsequious tonne ; and Simon himself, producing from a cigar-case 
 a lengthy and fragrant Trabuco, did not look, as he sipped and 
 he pufted the goods with which the gods had provided him, in the 
 least like the same Simon who was a traveller to a stay-maker, and 
 associated with the half-starved inhabitants of a model lodging- 
 house, wlio had lost his all in disastrous speculations, and was 
 obliged to pinch himself now for the sake of his little Adele. 
 
 And while Simon so sipped and puifed he meditated ; but 
 ■whether his thoughts ran in the French or the English language, 
 it concerns me not to tell. Who can? For aught you know, 
 your seemingly English neighbour may be thinking in Swedish, 
 or Selavonian, or Mauri, or the one primeval language known only 
 to himself; as poor Hartley Coleridge used to declare that he 
 tliought in the language of the Eujaxrians, his self-created tongue. 
 When I am excited, I think in Teloogoo ; and does not Eabelais 
 tell us of the nation who saw with their ears and understood with 
 their elbows ? So I will use the romancer's privilege, and trans- 
 late Simon Lefranc's meditations into indifferent English. 
 
 " There never was," he thought, " such an artificial baffling 
 little minx ; she is almost too clever, even for me. Where are 
 those papers ? What has she done with them ? She has defied 
 that most sagacious Mrs. Skinner, whose fingers are like cork- 
 screws, and whose eyes like probes — a searcher at Scotland Yard. 
 She has defied even our paragon La Mere Camuse at the Prefec- 
 ture, that dauntless woman who would take the skin off a blacka- 
 moor, if there was anything to be found underneath ; who would 
 take all the teeth out of your head, if there was anything worth 
 finding in the cavities. But Mrs. Skinner and La Mere Camuse 
 can do nothing with her ; they have turned her, so to speak, in- 
 side out. I myself, and Eiflard my man, — bah ! half-a-dozen men, 
 — have ransacked every table, every drawer, every chair-covering, 
 every feather-bed, every curtain-lining in these fine show-rooms ; 
 — we have looked behind the mirrors, and under the carpet, and 
 up the chimney : we have found enough, goodness knows, but
 
 THE AGONY 01' FLORENCE AKMYTAGE. 400 
 
 have yet failed to discover the one thing needful. Now I, Simon 
 Lefranc, flatter myself that I could find out the secret of the Man 
 in the Iron Mask, if that secret remained to be discovered ; and 
 yet so far as this one tiny particular secret is concerned, Florence 
 Armytage masters and defies me,as she has mastered and defied Mrs. 
 Skinner and La Mere Camuse." He rang a little silver bell, — no 
 luxury was deficient in Simon's housekeeping, — which anon was 
 answered by the obsequious tonne. This tonne had never formed 
 part of the household of the lady on the first-floor. She was, like 
 Simon Lefranc, her master, in the pay and the service of the 
 grand master of all of them — the Prefecture. " Send lliflard 
 here." 
 
 The tonne curtsied and withdrew. 
 
 Soon appeared on the scene Monsieur Riflard, by profession 
 garde de commerce, a catchpole to the civil tribunals ; by predilec- 
 tion scamp and spy. Monsieur Eiflard wore a long bottle-green 
 surtout, and his countenance was of a bilio-greenish hue, and the 
 nap of his hat had a tinge of green in it ; and it was with great 
 difficulty that he could ever be persuaded to release his hold of a 
 green cotton umbrella ; and altogether Monsieur Eiflard, had he 
 had anything to be jealous of, would have made a very admirable 
 representation of the green-eyed monster. 
 
 " Any new discoveries, Kiflard ? " 
 
 " None, master." 
 
 *' Has the porter's lodge below been searched ? " 
 
 " Everything has been searched, master ; nothing found but 
 what you have." 
 
 " It is well. I am going to the Palace ; there is an examina- 
 tion on this morning. We must get the papers from her by fair 
 or by foul means. Meanwhile go on searching. You may play a 
 game of cards, if you are tired ; but I should prefer your not 
 getting tipsy, as you did yesterday. Eemember, there are those 
 about who will report to me all that has been done. Good bye, 
 and keep your eyes open." 
 
 Monsieur Eiflard, whose only weakness was absinthe, made a 
 shambling bow of great deference, for Simon was an emperor 
 among his subordinates. Then the Chief of the Spies took his 
 hat and his cane and his gloves, and proceeded majestically, as
 
 410 THE SEVEN SOXS OF 3IAMM0]^. 
 
 beseemed a gentlemau of his degree, from tlie first-floor to the 
 basement, -where he found waitiug for him a snug little eoupS to 
 convey him to the Palace. "What Palace ? You are shortly to 
 learn. 
 
 Simon and his retainers had been in judicial possession of that 
 memorable first-floor for fourteen days, routing amongst its gor- 
 geous furniture, turning up and prying into its cupboards and 
 shelves, and cabinets of price, scattering the books in the library, 
 ripping up the draperies, gauging the key-hoies almost, for the one 
 absorbing object of their search. They were still seeking, and 
 had not yet found. They lived on the very best, for Simon had 
 command of abundant funds. They drank of the very choicest, 
 for the cellar of the lady on the first-floor was abundantly fur- 
 nished with rare vintages and curious seals. Oddly enough, 'twas 
 found on inquiry that she who owed money almost everywhere, 
 and. had defrauded almost every soul with whom she came ia 
 contact, had paid the rent of this place with undeviating punctu- 
 ality. "She was the best of lodgers," quoth the concierge, "the 
 best and most generous at Easter and the New Tear." Pauvre 
 petite dame ! the concierge pitied her, and it was something to be 
 pitied even by a porter. He and his wife, and the keeper of the 
 cafe over the way, and the proprietor of the wine-shop at the 
 corner, knew very well that Simon and his men were on the first- 
 floor, and what they were there for. Beyond that, nobody in or 
 out of the house, in that neighbourhood at least, knew anything 
 about the matter. Tou may live a hundi'ed years in a house at 
 Paris without being aware in the slightest degree of whom your 
 next neighbour may be. Our famous first-floor, our once gay and 
 brilliant abode of mirth, and wit, and feasting, and splendour, our 
 bygone haunt of fair women and brave men, our fairy court of 
 beauty and intellect, of which the little sovereign with her golden 
 hair throned it in so queenly a manner, our first-floor of the Eue 
 Grande-des-Petites-Maisons, — what are you now, and where is 
 your lady ? 
 
 "What a career!" muttered Simon, stepping into his coupe; 
 "what a career, how long continued, how triumphantly carried on, 
 and what a sorry end ! Coclidr, au Palais ! " The coachman knew 
 well enough what Palace was meant, and blithely drove on to the
 
 THE AGONY OF FLORENCE ARilYTAGE. 411 
 
 Boulevards, and down the crowded Rue Montmartre, and so down 
 towards the Quay, and over the bridge ; and the idlers and the 
 dandies recked little that the Chief of the Spies was passing in, 
 their midst. 
 
 Sol lucet omnibus. And the sun shone that morning in and 
 all about that great Palace. Shone on the emblazoned clock on. 
 the Quay, yhone on the peaked turrets of the grim Conciergerie. 
 Shone on the bars of the dun2;eon wlience Marie-Antoinette once 
 looked out. Shone on the golden spire of the Sainte-Chapelle. 
 Shone in great courtyard and on heavy bronze railing. Shone in 
 the huge Hall of the Lost Footsteps, where the suitors paced up 
 and down nibbling oyster-shells, Avhile their black-capped and 
 black-robed advocates regaled themselves with fat ovsters, taken 
 now from the Plaintiff, and now from the Defendant. Into, 
 tribunals of correctional police ; into courts of assize decorated 
 with inscriptions about Liberty, Equality, and Praternity ; into 
 judges' chambers and greffiers' offices and Imissiers' cabinets, — the 
 same sun shone, 
 
 Sol lucet omnibus. One ray — a pitying ray, a ray of grief, not 
 of mercy, — came through a barred window, and fell on the truckle- 
 bed where Florence Armytage was sitting. They had put her aii, 
 secret, not in solitary confinement ; that paragon of the Prefecture, 
 La Mere Camnse, who very much resembled a grenadier of the 
 Old Guard, moustaches and all, in a chintz bed-gown, was with 
 her day and night. She was in secret confinement, being seques- 
 tered from all communication with visitors from, without. The 
 precaution seemed almost needless ; for since her imprisonment 
 not one human being had sought admission to the presence of 
 Florence Armytage, who knew everybody that was noble, or rich, 
 or witty, or wicked enough to be wortli knowing in London and: 
 Paris. 
 
 Anotlier precaution, not qiiite so needless, had also been adopted. 
 They had put on the wretched little woman the camisole deforce — 
 the strait-waistcoat, a horrible arrangement of canvas, of straps 
 and tags and laces, with the sleeves knotted together. The cami- 
 sole cle force, tlie pi'ison authorities maintain, was a far more 
 humane and delicate instrument of coercion, where a lady was 
 concerned, than handcuffs; and so she who had worn so many
 
 412 THE SKViiX SO-NS Ol'' MAilMO.N. 
 
 Bilks and velvets, and mantles of sable, and bracelets of diamond, 
 and necklaces of pearl, sat huddled together in the coarse prison 
 peifjnoii', with her golden hair thrust underneath the coarse black 
 prison coif; and in these hideous swaddling bands of canvas and 
 leather she could just cleucli her hands, and raise them to her 
 fevered forehead, when La Mere Camuse fed her with a spoon 
 like a child. They had not forced her to wear this dress of torture 
 and ignominy owing to any attempt she had made to commit 
 suicide, or any fear that she would so attempt it ; but Florence 
 had been, to tell the truth, somewhat of a refractory prisoner. 
 She had scratched, she had fought, she had bitten, she had kicked, 
 she had wres^tled with the two horrible beldames who had brought 
 her from England, and who had subjected her to what she con- 
 sidered unspeakable indignities. But they had found nothing, — 
 not that, at least, for which they were in search, — and Florence 
 Armytage, even in the camisole de force, was in one respect 
 triumphant. 
 
 Stav, thev had found something. Her locket. Hovrever, no 
 questions had been asked about that ; not even Simon Lefranc 
 could know whose portrait that locket contained. 
 
 In the early days of her imprisonment, she had begged passion- 
 atelv for writing materials, but in vain. She wanted to exert her 
 Influence. She wanted to tell her Influence where she was, and 
 liow he might help her. The gaolers only grinned at her, and 
 refused her the much-coveted pens, ink, and paper. "What was 
 she to do? How was she to assist herself? She gnashed her 
 teeth when she remembered that she was in a country where she 
 might be detained for an indefinite period without trial, without 
 even examination. " Oh, for an English station-house ! " she 
 muttered to herself. " At least, they would bring me up before a 
 magistrate within twenty-four hours, and I could not be remanded 
 for more than a week at a time." Tou see that Elorence knew 
 something of English law. 
 
 Although access to pens, ink, and paper was denied her, and 
 although, when she asked for legal advice, she was told with a 
 grin that by-and-by would be quite soon enough for her to retain 
 an advocate, examination carae soon and frequently enough. An 
 intolerable personage, iu a sui!; of black and a white neckcloth,
 
 THE AGONY OF FI.GUEXCE ARMYTAGE. 413 
 
 accompanied by a, snake-like secretary, also in black turned up 
 with white, but both rusty and din^y in hue, came to her day by 
 day, and asked her interminable questions. They sat by her for 
 hours, pestering, almost maddening, her with blatid intei'rogatious. 
 It was strange to her tliat they said very little about the crimes 
 which she was accused of having committed in France, and for 
 which she had been arrested at the races by Simon Lefranc. They 
 appeared to be far more anxious concerning her antecedents iu 
 England and in India. They asked her the minutest, and appa- 
 rently the most trivial, questions about events in her early life ; — 
 about her education, her juvenile peccadilloes, her school-friends, 
 her courtship, her marriage, her parents, her connections ; who 
 her husband was, what he was, when he died ; how she came to 
 return to Europe, whereabouts in London and Brighton she had 
 had her many residences, what brought her first to think of living 
 in Paris, and taking that first-floor in the Kue Grande-des-Petites- 
 Maisons. But they tarried very little in Paris, and went back 
 again to England and India, travelling over the same ground again 
 and again, for no earthly or available purpose save barren curiosity 
 and prying impertinence ; so I'lorence Armytage thought. She 
 little knew, with all her astuteness, the slow and cautious steps, 
 the painful and elaborate minuteness, necessary to the composition 
 of that remarkable document, at once denunciatory and biogra- 
 phical, known as an Acte d' Accusation. 
 
 At first she answered these perpetual questions in a confused 
 and rambling, flighty, almost jaunty manner. She could scarcely 
 take the sable inquisitor and his snake-like secretary au ser^ieux. 
 She tiled her old blandishments, her old cat-like purrings and 
 gambols, on them. She thought that if she was indeed to die, 
 she would go to her death like Agag, mincingly. But she found 
 that though the functionaries were urbane enough, — the chief 
 was the very soul of politeness, — the polished surface of their 
 countenances only concealed visors of tlirice-terapered steel. 
 They administered the torture iu white kid gloves ; and the cords 
 to the pulleys of their rack were made of silk ; and their ordeal 
 by water was one of rose-water; but all these were not the -less 
 tortures, and iVightlul to endure. There is a story told, in 
 Kniclcerhocker s History of Xcw Torlc, how a shrewd, down-east
 
 414 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Tankee once questioned a simple Dutcliman out of Ms well-fed 
 steed, and left liim instead a vile calico-mare in exchange. In a 
 similar spirit, the polite inquisitors almost questioned Florence 
 Armytage out of her five senses, out of her skin, out of her life, 
 and left her a poor, trembling, bewildered thread-paper of a 
 woman, rocking herself on her pallet-bed ; and wishing that she 
 had never been born to undergo such cross-questioning. Then 
 she grew testy, and wayward, and irritable. She did not know, 
 she was sure ; it was so long ago, she could not remember ; how 
 was she to tell ? what did they mean by asking such things ? — 
 and similar evasions. Then she pleaded her inability to converse 
 any longer in French ; and then the chief inquisitor resumed his 
 queries in the most grammatical Euglidh, dashed by the slightest 
 foreign accent. She lost all patience at last, and flatly refused to 
 answer any more questions. Her tormentors did not lose their 
 temper, but left her for a while, and then came back to resume 
 the verbal infliction. All this was necessary, perhaps, for Justice 
 and for expiation. It formed the first stage of tlie agony of 
 Florence Armytage. It was the preface to a volumijious and 
 terrific Act of Accusation. 
 
 She had been in another prison — where, she knew not, but it 
 seemed to be in the centre of Paris — for at least a week before 
 she was brought within the precincts of the Palace of Justice, 
 and immured au secret in a cell belonging to the Conciergerie. 
 Before she came hither, they gave her nothing but bread and 
 water morning and eveuing, with some tliin soup at noonday. 
 They told her at the Conciergerie that she was now a la pistole,-— 
 that is, she could order any sustenance she liked, which would be 
 paid for from tlie funds found upon her. She might have j^ens, 
 ink, and paper, and write as many letters as she chose. She 
 might have any books to read, — novels and vaudevilles even, if 
 she pleased. She might smoke her cigarette, if it were agreeable 
 to her, and take her glass of cura9oa after dinner : she would be 
 treated in all respects like a lady. IS'ay, Justice itself might not 
 feel indisposed to look benignantly on her manifold ofiences, 
 if she would but consent to answer certain questions, and 
 to deliver up a certain packet of papers, of which she 
 was either the possessor, or of which she knew the place
 
 THE AGONY OF FLORENCE AllMYTAGE. 415 
 
 of concealmeut. It was but a trifling favour they asked 
 from her ; it might add some years of liberty to a life already 
 doomed to incarceration; it might save that life itself. They sent 
 the almoner of the prison to her, — a worthy ecclesiastic, with aa 
 oilv smile and a su£;ared tongue. He called her his dear errino- 
 child, his strayed lamb, his stricken, dove ; he spoke of that Mercy 
 which is luliuitc ; he touched, now on the chastisements of this 
 world, whose severity, by prudence, might be mitigated, — now on 
 the punishments of the next, which no human art, no human 
 cunning could evade. Was it not better, after all, to t?-ansiffer 
 avec la Justice ? Was it not worth while to try and mollify the 
 furies, who were already plaiting their scorpion-whips for her? 
 She was deaf to persuasions and deaf to entreaty. The old fiend 
 came up within her, and made her incurably stubborn and rebel- 
 lious. It was thus when she was a child, and could have avoided 
 punishment by saying one little word, and would not say it, and 
 suffered stripes and hunger and solitary durance. ISTo, she would 
 not say the word now; no, she would not give up the thing 
 they wanted. K'o, she would not. Let them send her to the 
 travaux forces for life; let them shave her head, and dress her in the 
 infamous grey flannel of the convict; let them drag her to the Place 
 de la Hoquette, and subject her to the same awful fate as that 
 which Madame Laff;irge so narrowly escaped ; let them cut her to 
 pieces, let them roast her over a slow fire ; she was in their power, 
 and they could do with her as it seemed best to them ; but she 
 would not say the word, and she would not deliver up the secret. 
 
 The tactics of her gaolers changed ; the pious almoner, with 
 oily smile and sugared tougue, kept away. He would return no 
 more, they told her, in threatening tones, until the morrow of her 
 condemnation to death, until the dawn of her execution-day. In 
 iieu of the priest came a harsh prison-director, came the substi- 
 tute of the Procurator of the liepublic, with bitter reproach and 
 stern menace. She must be subdued, they said. Her writin<T 
 materials, her books, were taken away from her. The bread and 
 water diet Avas resumed. She had been searched in London at 
 the police-office, where Simon Lefrauc had first taken her. She 
 liad been searched again at the Prefecture on her first arrival in 
 Paris. She was again delivered over to the horrible crooked
 
 41G THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 fingers of La Mere Camuse. It was then she began to bite and 
 scratch, aud kick and struggle; it was then they put the degrad- 
 ing camisole de force upon her. 
 
 And so God's sun, that shines for all, cast his radiance upon 
 this wretched, forlorn, hopeless sinner, for she had no hope left. 
 She had ceased even to trust in her Influence. She was in a rage at 
 her capture, as a tigress might be in a rage when caught in the 
 toils. She hated herself; and could see, in her soul's mirror, how 
 black and stained Avith loathsome crimes she was; but she did not 
 repent. They would kill her now, she supposed; let them. The 
 guillotine was the last infliction she could suffer in this life— and 
 beyond that ? She saw the PJace de la Eoquette, two tall posts, 
 the board on rollers, the impending knife, the long red basket 
 filled with saw-dust. She felt in imagination the cold steel of the 
 executioner's scissors, as he sheared her shining tresses from the 
 back of her neck to give the axe's edge full play. And she felfc 
 the last awful stroke ; heard the heavy thud of the axe as it fell : 
 that was death of a surety ; but beyond that was nothing but a 
 huge, black, boundless, and eternal voyage. Was ever woman in 
 worse case tlian this ? 
 
 On the morning when the sun was shining, there came a tap 
 at the wicket of her cell ; and the Judas-hole was opened, and an 
 impudent face peered through the grating. 
 
 " Open, Mere Camuse," said the voice of Simon Lefranc ; 
 " open, and let us look at our little caged bird." 
 
 The searcher gave admission to the Chief of the Spies, who had 
 ingress everywhere. 
 
 "Ton can wait outside for a few minutes," Simon said, saun- 
 tering into the dungeon with his hands in his pockets, his hat on 
 one side, and his heart on his sleeve as xisual. 
 
 The old woman began to grumble a little, and plead her orders 
 not to leave her prisoner alone even for a moment ; but Simon 
 put her aside \\\ih. a coniideut shrug and a confident grin, telling 
 her that she' knew the prisoner was perfectly safe with him, and 
 that if he could not manage her, the whole body of the French 
 police, yeHf/ar/Hene, spies, and political agents to boot, would be 
 unequal to the task. So the IMere Camuse, still grumbling, but 
 quite subservient, surrendered her key of office to the spy, aud
 
 THE AGONY OF FLORENCE ARMYTAGE. 417 
 
 submitted to be locked out. Simon took the additional precau- 
 tion of shutting the trap of the Judas-hole, which could be pulled 
 inwards if a certain spring was touciied. Then he advanced to 
 where the prisoner sat on her truckle-bed, haggard and ATan, in 
 the sunshine ; then he pulled a stool towards her, and sat down 
 facing his caged bird ; then he produced his never-failing cigar- 
 case, took out a Trabuco, bit off the tip, moistened the stump, 
 kindled a fusee on the sole of his boot, lighted his cigar, crossed 
 one leg over the other, rested one hand on his hip, one elbow on 
 his knee, and, tranquilly emitting little skeins of smoke, contem- 
 plated the prisoner with quite a paternal air. 
 
 "And how is our little bird?" he asked, in a tone that was 
 meant to be soothing, and might have been so had it not been 
 inconceivably insolent. 
 
 The little bird made, as well as her muffled hands would allow, 
 a gesture of disdain, and uttered an inarticulate murmur of 
 repugnance towards her visitor. 
 
 " Come, come ; we must not be angry with our Simon ; we 
 must not grieve the heart of our good Papa." 
 
 At the word Papa the thoughts of Florence Armytage darted, 
 straight as an arrow from the Tartar's bow, three hundred miles 
 away from that dreary Conciergerie cell to an up-stair room in a 
 boarding-house at Bayswater, where a man with the face of a 
 ruffian was working in a little laboratory, — she lounging in a 
 great easy-chair, he laughing and joking as he poured one liquid 
 from one phial to another, and calling her his Plorence and his 
 darling, and saying that he would find out the great secret yet, 
 and make all their fortunes. 
 
 "Papa!" Mrs, Armytage almost mechanically repeated, but 
 with an accent of bitter scorn. 
 
 "Tes, Papa," resumed Simon, "Grandpapa, Uncle, Cousin, 
 Guardian — everything now except Judge and Jury. We must 
 be obedient to our Papa; we must listen to what he says for his 
 own satisfaction and our own good. Else things will go hardly 
 with us. They have gone a little hardly with us lately. Eh, ma 
 mie ? " 
 
 She groaned bitterly. " They have indeed. Heaven knows," 
 she muttered. 
 
 E E
 
 418 THE SEVEN SONS OP MAMMON. 
 
 " That is because ^ve have been naughty. Naughty children 
 must be punished ; when they are good, they are kissed, and have 
 lon-bons given them : we have been punished witb the camisole de 
 force, and bread and water, and the attentions of the Mere 
 Camuse. "Would we not like to be good, and have our books and 
 papers back again? have a nice little roast chicken and a bottle of 
 Moselle for dinner ? and wear a nice morning wrapper instead of 
 that ugly camisole, and take a walk in the courtyard and see the 
 sky, and a green tree or two, and the faces of our fellow- 
 creatures? " 
 
 "I should like to be out of this place," said Mrs. Armytage. 
 " I would be sooner torn to pieces by wild horses than remain in 
 it two days longer. "Why don't they try me, and send me to tbe 
 galleys at once ? " 
 
 " They don't send ladies to the galleys in this polite country, 
 ma petite maman^'' replied Simon ; " they send them to a nice 
 little maison ccntrale, where they shave their heads, and put tbem 
 to nice hard work. Besides, do you know, mon ange, that you 
 have done some funny little things that M. le Procureur de la 
 Eepublique knows all about, and whicb may lead him to demand, 
 not that you be sent to the galleys, but that your pretty little 
 head be cut off?" 
 
 " I am not guilty," said Mrs. Armytage. 
 
 "Bah!" cried the spy, rising, knocking the ash off his cigar, 
 
 changing his tone as he did so from banter to harshness. "-4 
 
 d'autres, ces contes jaunes. Listen to me. Widow Armytage ; 
 
 listen to me, woman with half-a-dozen names and half-a-thousand 
 
 crimes; listen to me, forger, murderess, swindler, thief ! Tou 
 
 will not be tried before you have been found guilty between the 
 
 four walls of this cell, or those of the cabinet of the examining 
 
 judge. Little by little the Act of Accusation has been building 
 
 up ; it will not take the jury ten minutes to decide your fate ; it 
 
 will not take the Advocate- General twenty minutes to plead your 
 
 head off your white shoulders. Justice has got hold of you, my 
 
 pet; that Justice which never loosens its grip till the bird is 
 
 dead, or the mouse is torn to pieces. Tou are in the claws of the 
 
 cat of the Palace of Justice. La cTiatte que ne perd jamais son 
 
 rat. Do you went to live or die? "
 
 THE AGONY OF FLORENCE AKMYTAGE. 41'J 
 
 "I want to have this strait-waistcoat taken off, and to be 
 alio wed to comb my hair." Her poor golden ringlets ! they were 
 indeed wofuUy dishevelled. 
 
 " The only way to have your wish, the only way to save your 
 life, is to reply to that which has been asked of you, — is to render 
 up those papers which you have, or of which you know the 
 hiding-place." 
 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 " Will you consent ? " 
 
 " No ! a thousand times no ! " 
 
 " Under those circumstances," said Simon Lefrauc, again re- 
 turning to his tone of bantering politeness, " I have the honour 
 to wish you, Madame Armytage, a very good morning. A few 
 more questions will shortly be put to you by some one who has 
 even more authority than I have to ask them, and who will 
 perhaps be more successful in his interrogations." 
 
 He moved towards tlie door, unlocked it, and went out into 
 the corridor ; then gave some whispered orders in a low tone to 
 the Mere Camuse, and so departed. Five minutes after he was 
 lounging, with his hat on one side, and his hands in his pockets, 
 and his heart upon his sleeve, through the great Hall of the Lost 
 [Footsteps ; and as he paced those well-worn flags he said mentally, 
 " We have but one more resource left, — the locket, — and that, 
 I think, will not fail us." 
 
 The female turnkey did not inflict her abhorred presence upon 
 the prisoner for a full half-hour after the departure of Simon 
 Lefranc ; then she entered the cell accompanied by another 
 assistant, almdst as tall, and quite as forbidding in appearance, 
 as herself. Florence Armytage turned to see what new tortures 
 were in store for her. To her surprise, the two women ap- 
 proached her with something like gentleness in their manner, 
 and addressed her in language which was almost kind. They 
 took from her the hated camisole de force ; they had brought 
 with them a bundle containing a suit of her own apparel, rich 
 and dainty as she was wont to wear ; not, however, the toilet in 
 which she had been taken prisoner, but another. In this they 
 would with their own hands have attired her ; but, with an 
 invincible feeling of repulsion, she declined the services of these 
 
 s s 2
 
 420 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 ghastly cliamber-maids, and when bidden to dress herself, did so 
 with much meekness. They let her comb her pretty hair, holding 
 a mirror for her as she arranged it in the old fascinating clusters 
 of ringlets. They gave her a bonnet, a glistening toy of ribbons 
 and beads and feathers ; they gave her a pair of her old Houbi- 
 gant six-and-a-quarter gloves ; they gave her a cambric handker- 
 chief, artfully scented ; they even, with a sardonic smile, offered 
 her some rouge. She allowed them to lace her little hotlines, 
 those wonderful little hottines the heels of which had been so 
 often tapped in petty petulance on the soft carpets, those hottines 
 which had covered the little feet that had trodden so often the 
 paths of vanity, and vice, and crime. They then gave her her 
 parasol, and bade her put her Brussels lace veil down ; and, but 
 that she had no jewels, no chains of gold, but that she had no 
 little dog to follow her, but that her face was deadly pale and 
 that there were livid lines under her eyes and at the corners of 
 her mouth, she was the old Florence Armytage of the golden 
 ringlets and the rustling drapery. 
 
 They asked her if she would have some refreshment ; and all 
 proud and rebellious as the little woman had been, she valued 
 her creature-comforts too highly not to accept an improvement 
 in her bill-of-fare, when it could be accepted without damaging 
 concessions. So with sufficient appetite, yet in somewhat of a 
 mechanical manner likewise, she ate a little meat and drank a 
 little wine, and felt a little stronger for that which was to come 
 next : what that was to be, she did not know. She waited after 
 this repast another full half-hour, then another tap came to the 
 wicket, and one of the huissiers of the Palace, a grave man in 
 black, with a silver chain round his neck, entered the cell, 
 accompanied by two gendarmes. 
 
 " The Widow Armytage," said the huissier, in as sonorous a 
 tone as though he had been addressing a crowded audience 
 instead of a wretched prisoner, to the gaolers, " is summoned to 
 appear before M. le Juge d'' Instruction in his cabinet. Widow 
 Armytage, you will accompany me." 
 
 The Widow Armytage rose submissively from the truckle-bed, 
 where she had been sitting ready dressed. A gendarme placed 
 himself on either side of her, and the huissier preceding, the
 
 THE AGONY OF PLOUENCE AliMYTAGE. 421 
 
 little procession passed through the door, and began to move 
 through the corridors of the prison. 
 
 The two she-gaolers were left together. 
 
 "Her affair will soon be settled," said the Mere Camuse, 
 beginning to arrange the prisoner's bed, 
 
 " Not so soon, perhaps, as you imagine," replied the second 
 harridan. She will give M. le Juge d' Instruction, and the whole 
 Palace of Justice into the bargain, more trouble than half-a-dozen 
 brigands and assassins. Unefameuse! Allez.'^ 
 
 " What is she accused of ? " said the Mere Camuse. " I know- 
 she nearly kicked me to pieces, and bit my hand through, when 
 I was making my little perquisitions." 
 
 " How do I know ? " replied the other ; " it is none of our 
 business to inquire. We shall know soon enough when the Court 
 of Assizes opens." 
 
 You see that they manage these things so much better in 
 France. 
 
 The corridors and the passages through which the gendarmes, 
 the Jiuissier, and Morence Armytage passed, the staircases they 
 ascended and descended, seemed interminable. Once they 
 emerged into a narrow iron gallery, running along the wall, but 
 close to the roof of the great Hall of the Lost Footsteps. The 
 gendarmes kept closer to Florence as they traversed this gallery. 
 8he could look down, however, and see far below on the pave- 
 ment the straggling groups of weary suitors nibbling oyster- 
 shells ; the little knots of black-capped, black-robed advocates 
 swallowing fat oysters. She did not see, but was clearly seen by, 
 our friend with his hands in his pockets and his heart on his 
 sleeve, who, as he craned his neck to watch her pass with her 
 escort, gave a low whistle, and said " Bon ! Our little afiair is 
 about to be decided. Let us see what M. le Juge will make of 
 our obstinate little friend." 
 
 And Simon Lefranc was seen no more that day in the Hall of 
 the Lost Footsteps. 
 
 The gendarmes and their charge passed through a little swino- 
 door covered with baize, descended a wide and somewhat hand- 
 some staircase, and entered a long, lofty, vaulted corridor, into 
 which opened many doors, each bearing a name inscribed upon
 
 422 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 its centre panel ; eacli door bad beside a number. These ■n'ere 
 the cabinets of MM. les Jiiges d' Instruction ; and into cabinet 
 ISo. 5, Florence Armytage was ushered, the Jiidssier preceding ber, 
 but the gendarmes remaining outside. 
 
 The door was immediately locked behind ber, a cbair was 
 pointed out to ber, and she was bidden to sit down. After the 
 gloomy sternness of the cell she bad just left, after the cold and 
 naked want and misery in whicb she had passed tbe days of ber 
 captivity — she wbo bad passed ber wicked life in tremor and 
 anxiety certainly, but still in silken luxury and wanton plenty 
 and soft repose, — it was a relief to Florence to find berself in an 
 apartment whicb offered no signs of being in contiguity to the 
 sternest and most repellent of Frencb prisons. Cabinet No. 5, 
 was an apartment of considerable size, comfortably, and even 
 bandsomely furnished, thickly carpeted, witb heavy curtains to 
 tbe windows, a number of easy-chairs about, and witb a handsome 
 clock ticking on tbe marble mantel-piece beneatb the insignia of 
 the Republic one and indivisible. There were two large book- 
 cases, and in tbe centre of tbe room was a buge official table 
 covered witb leatber, and strewed witb filed and docketed papers. 
 Before it was a vacant arm-chair ; and directly in a line witb this, 
 facing tbe table, Florence Armytage and her cliair were planted 
 by tbe silent and dexterous Imissier. 
 
 The clock on the mantel-piece had marked tbe passage often 
 minutes, wben a side door, not tbe one by whicb Florence bad 
 entered, opened, and there entered, smirking and smiling, and 
 clad in tbe invariable black with a white neckclotb, but with tbe 
 ribbon of tbe Legion of Honour at bis button-hole, a charming 
 gentleman of middle age, a bald bead and a blue eye, a fair whisker 
 and a rosy cbeek, and a gleaming set of teetb, and a white soft 
 band decorated witb a snowy wristband, and a diamond broocb in 
 bis frill, and a signet-ring on bis right fore-finger, and a beavy 
 chain and seals, and polisbed boots and a large yellow China silk 
 pocket-handkerchief, of whicb be made frequent and sounding use. 
 Tbis was the Juge d' Instruction. He looked mucb less like a 
 judge attached to a court of criminal judicature than like a pros- 
 perous linen-draper's assistant, or an Englisb ladies' physician, or 
 a fasbionable undertaker — say Plumer Eavenbury for instance —
 
 THE AGONY OF FLORENCE AEMYTAGE. 423 
 
 who did not wish to look too professional, but liked to combine the 
 mortuary with the mundane. Yet M. Plon was the Juge d'Tn- 
 struction all over, the sharp astute criminal inquisitor, who had 
 had to do with many scores of assassins, robbers, and vagabonds, 
 male and female, in his time, and who, though shorn of his quon- 
 dam powers of rack and thumb-sci'ew, was in spirit the lineal 
 descendant of those old counsellors of the Parliament, in the 
 ancien regime, who, when they went home at night, used to be 
 asked by their pretty wives whether they had applied the torture 
 to any one that day. And M. Plon, making a sidelong bow as he 
 entered, to Justice in general, and the prisoner in particular, 
 seated himself in his great arm-chair, first threw himself back in a 
 critical manner, and, shading his blue eyes with one of the white 
 hands, looked long and keenly at Plorence. Then he leant for- 
 ward on his table, folded his white hands about six inches in 
 advance, so that his signet-ring might be displayed to the best 
 advantage, flashed his white teetli on the captive widow, and took 
 another keen glance at her with the blue eyes. This was what 
 M. Plon called " fixing his subject." 
 
 He fixed her so well that she flinched under his gaze, as 
 birds are said to do beneath the fascination of the basilisk. 
 There was nothing terrifying either in M. Plon or in his speech. 
 He was simply fascinating, and murdered while he fascinated. 
 
 " And your state of health, madame ? " he asked, with polite 
 suddenness, 
 
 " I am as well as I can expect to be," Florence answered. 
 
 " Tou have been subject to some severities. Justice regrets 
 them ; but you have lett us no other alternative. Even as it is, 
 you have been treated with certain igards and certain meiiage- 
 ments which, to one in your position, might justifiably have been 
 withheld." 
 
 " I know that I have been stripped and searched over and over 
 again, and treated with the most revolting indignity, by two hor- 
 rible old women. I know that I have been thrust into a strait- 
 waistcoat, as though I were a raving maniac. I know that I have 
 been half-starved, and debarred, not only from writing to my 
 friends and to my professional advisers, but from even reading 
 a book."
 
 424 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 " The exigencies of the case, my dear madame, — only consider 
 the exigencies of the case. The provocation, — you must bear 
 the provocation in mind. We acted towards you with the ten- 
 derest solicitude until we were compelled, through your contu- 
 macy, to liave recourse to harsh measures. Tour arrest in Eng- 
 land was surrounded by elements of the most chivalrous courtesy " 
 —M. le Jurje was speaking in French — " on the part of the 
 agents of authority. Only judge of what a scandal, what an ex- 
 posure, what an esclandre, from your capture in so public a place 
 in a public manner ! " 
 
 " Yes," Florence said, " I was captured, that is to say, kid- 
 napped, in the most private manner. I was brought over here 
 like a bale of contraband goods. I have been smuggled from 
 prison to prison, and tormented in every imaginable way. Are 
 these your notions of Law and Justice, M. le Juge?" 
 
 " My dear madame, we manage things differently on this side 
 of the water. Tou have probably heard that sentiment before. 
 All that has been done could be justified to you by rule and pre- 
 cedent, if justification were needed ; but it is not. We have here, 
 my dear madame, within the walls of the Palais de Justice, and the 
 adjacent Conciergerie, what is called le pouvoir onateriel, the ma- 
 terial power ; and, within the limits of reason, we act as we please, 
 and how we please. However, I am not about to bandy words 
 with you. I have one or two little questions to ask you, and we 
 will at once proceed to business." 
 
 He unclasped the white hands, and taking a little silver bell 
 which stood on the table beside him, softly tinkled it. In a 
 minute or two a huissier — not Florence's huissier, he had been 
 motionless all this while behind her chair — made his appearance 
 at the side door. 
 
 " Beg M. le Greffier to step hither." 
 
 The huissier retired, and almost immediately afterwards the 
 snake-like personage in the rusty black and the dingy white, 
 who had accompanied the first inquisitor to Florence's dungeon, 
 made his appearance. 
 
 " AVill you be good enough, monsieur, to take a seat and tran- 
 scribe while I proceed with the examination of this lady ? " 
 
 " I cannot bear it ! I cannot bear it ! " cried Florence, covering
 
 THE AGONY OF FLORENCE ARMYTAGE. 425 
 
 her face with her hands. " Do anything to me ; but spare me 
 the infliction of that frightful ordeal. Send these men away, and 
 I will answer any questions you like to put to me." 
 
 " M. le Greyer," said M. Plon, his white teeth blandly beam- 
 ing, "will you have the goodness to retire? Huissiers,^' he 
 added, " you may withdraw. If there be any further necessity for 
 your services, I will ring." 
 
 When they were left alone, the tTuge d^ Instruction once more 
 threw himself back in his great arm-chair, and took a survey of 
 his prisoner in the critical manner, shading his blue eyes with his 
 hand meauAvhile. Then he bent forward, clasped his hands before 
 him, and said, as blandly as ever : 
 
 " Now, madame, do you know anything of the original of the 
 portrait contained in this locket ? " 
 
 And, so saying, he held aloft a little golden locket attached to a 
 slender chain. It was open, and framed within it was the portrait 
 of a fair young man, clad in English military uniform, and with 
 very full auburn moustaches.^
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 TIME WOEKS WONDEES. 
 
 '■'■L^ affaire cle la Rue des Oursins?^' The particulars of that 
 affair at Pinchley ? The mystery of the Man with the Iron 
 Mask ? The Gowrie conspiracy ? The Spanish marriages ? Don 
 Pacifico's wrongs ? The Crimean war ? Fauntleroy's bank- 
 ruptcy ? Mrs. Potiphar's divorce case ? Mrs. Faggot's dia- 
 monds ? The gold-dust robbery ? Mr. Toadycram's Peerage ? 
 The great literary quarrel between Mr. Sphoon and Doctor 
 Bunglecrumpus ? Why Miss Cygnet left the stage, and how 
 Jack Elbowsout manages to give dinner parties ? Signer Cobra 
 di Capello's hold on my Lord Pitzgypesland ; and Signora Mer- 
 candotti's relationship to the Bishop of Bosfursus — she is said to 
 be his niece ; friendly George Gafferer's daily dinner, and clean 
 shirt even ? Does everybody know all about those enigmas ? 
 Have those mysteries been quite solved ? Has the dernier mot 
 been spoken ? and does nothing more remain to be told in con- 
 nection with those histories ? 
 
 The noble prayer of the historian Niebuhr was to live until he 
 could bring his Eoman record down to the period where Gibbon 
 began. He was not spared to accomplish a tithe of his task ; and 
 there is a dark yawning gulf between the end of exploded Eoman 
 fable, and the beginning of Eoman fact. Was Mr. Gibbon quite 
 certain about his facts either? Truly, he quotes Ammianus, and 
 Zosimus, and the Abbe de la Bleterie, and a thousand others ; 
 but might not Ammianus, and Zosimus, aud the Abbe de la Ble- 
 terie, with their thousand brethren, have lied sometimes ? My 
 great-grandson may be fortunate enough to receive a somewhat 
 better education than his ancestor. He may turn historian and 
 write the chronicle of the last Tuscan revolution, taking the 
 Marquis of Normauby, and Sir George Bowyer, as guides for bis
 
 TIME "VrorvKS ATONDERS. 427 
 
 facts. Your great-grandson may condescend to undertake a 
 similar task, adopting the state papers of Baron Eicasoli as bis 
 authorities. I don't think the two historians ■will agree very 
 closely. How, too, is M. Thiers' biography of Napoleon I., in 
 the Consulate and the Empire, to be reconciled with our old friend, 
 the Pere Loriquet's statement that Louis XVIII. returned to his 
 dominions in 1815, on the "resignation" of the "Marquis de 
 Bonaparte," who during fifteen years had governed France for 
 him ? And the panegyrics of MM. Mery and Belmontet upon 
 the present order of things ? How will they tally with M. Hugo's 
 opuscule " Napoleon the Little ? " And the Fenny Trumpet^ s 
 eulogy on my last epic, as compared with the Sixpenny Slaughter' 
 house's demolition of the same ? Will the truth, the whole truth, 
 and nothing but the truth, ever come out, I wonder ? Did Sir 
 Hector Haynau really beat his wife, or did Lady Haynau (she 
 was a Miss Brownrigg) beat him ? There are people who are 
 ready to take an affidavit that they have seen the letters which 
 passed between Mrs. Aholibah and Captain Lawdess, containing, 
 they say, a clear confession of her guilt ; there are others who 
 maintain that she was the most injured of women, and that all 
 her troubles were due to the machinations of that wicked Miss 
 Blackadder. I read the other day in a paper called the Spiritual 
 Magazine, that I had been incognito to a spirit-rapping medium, 
 and expressed myself much surprised and edified by what I saw 
 and heard. The whole narrative — beyond the fact of my having 
 once paid half-a-crown to a very clumsy Witch of Endor in Eed 
 Lion Street, Holboru, who was about as successful in raising the 
 ghost of Samuel as though she had tried to evoke the spirit of 
 Samuel Hall — ^^was from beginning to end a tissue of abominable 
 lies ; and yet, I dare say, there are people who believe in the 
 Spiritual Magazine, and that my conversion to rappology has been 
 quoted by many devout rapparees. If I am ever unlucky enough 
 to be hanged, I doubt not but that the Seven Dials Plutarch, who 
 compiles my biography, will add a belief in spirit-rapping to the 
 catalogue of my crimes. 
 
 It is all very well to put together a neat collection of state- 
 ments, and weave an ingenious theory round them, and found a 
 variety of more or less sage comments upon them ; but is this,
 
 428 THE SEVEN SOIvS OP MAMMON. 
 
 after all, history ? I am afraid not, and that my account of the 
 transactions entered into by Mammon, and his several sons, their 
 friends and acquaintances, may be proved in the main to be as 
 unreliable, say as Herodotus, or as Guiceiardini, or as Roger of 
 Wendover, You see that I have an implicit belief in the reality 
 of my story, and of my characters. There is not an incident or a 
 personage in these pages that is vrholly imaginary, any more than 
 in a dream ; there is not a single thing, however wild and impro- 
 bable it may appear, but has formed part, at some time or another, 
 of the action of our lives ; only, in this tale, as in a vision of the 
 night, coherence may be to some extent absent, and time and 
 place slightly confused, and the unities violated, and the round 
 people put, sometimes, into the square holes, or vice versa. But 
 my chief diiEculty lies in the uncertainty as to whether the events 
 I am about to narrate came about precisely in the order and in. 
 the manner I have followed. Somebody may know the history of 
 Sir Jasper's misfortunes, of Mrs. Armytage's agony, better than 
 I do, and may be enabled to give a version of the affair differing 
 very widely from mine. What says the governor of Lewes Gaol? 
 What sayest thou, T. E., attoruey-at-law ? You knew Florence, 
 well enough. How much have I left unsaid ? How much have I 
 added ? How much altered ? And the catastrophe — the wind, 
 ing-up — which is imminent ? Is that, strictly in accordance with 
 what actually took place ? We shall never know, probably, any 
 more than we shall ever be enabled to tell, with exactitude, 
 whether Troy was ever besieged for the sake of a quarrel about 
 Mrs. Menelaus ; whether Dick Whittington was ever indebted to 
 a cat for his fortune and his fame ; and whether there was ever a 
 British king called Arthur, who had a queen (not over prudent) 
 named Guinevere. The false is ever mixed with the true ; there 
 is always the golden as well as the silver side to the shield ; there 
 are always people ready to come into court and make oath that 
 they saw the chameleon of a bright sky-blue colour, and others 
 who persist in swearing that he was pink ; and the balance will 
 not be struck, and the needle will not be eliminated from the 
 bottle of hay, and the pearl picked from the dunghill, until human 
 lying and human blundering are of no more account than tobacco 
 ashes, — until the fools who wrote " Essays and Eeviews " are con-
 
 TIME WORKS WONDERS. 429 
 
 founded at tlieir own impudent ignorance, and the mud in tlie 
 wine-glass becomes clearer than the crystal, and a towering tree 
 springs from the grain of mustard seed, and all our tiny cock- 
 boats of fancied learning, and fancied reason, and fancied logic, 
 are swallowed up in the great dazzling ocean of God's Truth, 
 
 A year, so I assume, had passed. The greensward once more 
 showed itself in Hyde Park on the site of the Exhibition buildins:, 
 and the ingenious persons who had speculated on finding thousands 
 of pounds in bracelets, sleeve buttons, and porte-monnaies, dropped 
 by careless visitors between the interstices of the flooring, had 
 reaped an abundant crop of disappointment. The world had gone 
 on pretty much as usual. There had been, to be sure, a coup d'etat, 
 and a change of government in a neighbouring country, but the 
 fact of the Empire being Peace had not caused larks to fall ready- 
 roasted from the skies ; while a certain ruler's change of residence 
 from the Elysee to the Tuileries had not materially affected the 
 receipts of the Pompes Eunebres. When you and I die, the sun 
 will not necessarily put on a mourning hatband ; and I am afraid 
 that the undertaker's men will be as merry and as thirsty as ever, 
 as they swing their legs over the black roof coming homewards. I 
 have heard of a whole nation being " plunged in grief" at the death 
 of a king or a great man. I want to know whether this immersion 
 in sorrow ever caused an appreciable diminution in the consump- 
 tion of butcher's meat. When the great Mirabeau died, Mr. 
 Carlyle tells us that the populace, in the exuberance of their grief, 
 would not permit the playgoers to enter the theatres, so the bafiled 
 amusement hunters thronged all the cafes instead, and wept over 
 the departed patriot and their petits verves until two o'clock in the 
 morning. Do ,you remember the eve and the day of the great 
 Duke of Wellington's funeral? The nights belonging to them 
 were two of the most drunken ever known in the metropolis of 
 Britain. I think John Evelyn has something to the same effect 
 to say concerning the interment of Oliver Cromwell, and Horace 
 Walpole of the obsequies of George the Second. It is curious to 
 mark how impulsively a nation "plunged in grief" betakes itself 
 to drinking. 
 
 Well, a year had passed, and friendly George Gafferer dined 
 and wore clean linen as usual. The years passed lightly over the
 
 430 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 amicable creature's head. He was discreet, and, like Pontenelle, 
 took care not to remind the ruling powers too often of how old he 
 was and how undeserving. So they, having matters of more 
 moment in hand, seemed to let him be. It chanced one mellow 
 evening, in the summer of 1852, that George was bidden to the 
 annual feast of the Hospital for Hare Lip, held at the Freemasons'. 
 Doctor Tooth, the honorary physician, had sent him a card, under 
 a vague impression that George was connected with the press. 
 He had about as much connexion with it as an ex-fifer in the 
 German Legion has with the British army. George was in high 
 feather on the Hare Lip night ; worthy Mr. Splitmug, the secre- 
 tary to the institution, had received him most courteously in the 
 ante-chamber, and bidden the head waiter to take special care of 
 him, as of the other gentlemen of the press, in the way of choice 
 wines with curious seals, grapes of rarity, and peaches of price. 
 Mr. Widemouth, treasurer, had come down and tapped him on 
 the back, and whispered to him that his last paragraph on the 
 claims of the Hospital for public support in The Tinlding Cymbal 
 was capital. The friendly man had. no more written it than he 
 had climbed up Mont Blanc that morning before breakfast. Nay, 
 more than this, to crown his cornucopia of pleasure, the Eoyal 
 Duke who was to take the chair had, in squeezing past him, posi- 
 tively accosted him and vouchsafed to say, " How do — how do — 
 hope you are qi^ite well — quite well, hay ? " George was in 
 ecstasies ; these condescending words were spoken in the hearing 
 of at least six waiters, and of all the gentlemen of the press. 
 Cabinet Steinwein was immediately brought for him to drink with 
 his turbot. Old Mopps, of The VulUire, the man who always 
 takes three times salmon, and curses the waiters, and hates and 
 envies everybody, looked up with a wolfish glare as the Gafferer 
 was thus honoured. The truth is, that His Eoyal Highness did 
 not know George from Adam, but he had seen his friendly phiz so 
 often at reviews, dinners, fancy-fairs, and other meetings of a 
 public nature, that he fancied he must know him, although whether 
 George was a lord of the bedchamber or a half-pay quartermaster 
 with a grievance, or a member of Parliament, or a rural dean, was 
 quite a matter of uncertainty to the royal mind. But what he 
 said was uttered in his blue riband and his star, and amidst the
 
 TIME ^YORKS WONDERS. 431 
 
 strains of " See tlie Conquering Hero comes," and George well- 
 nigh boarded and lodged on the strength of the royal notice for 
 the next three months. 
 
 Little Topinamboo, of The Mosquito, was George's right-hand 
 neighbour. 0' Crawl, of The Gutter Lane Chronicle, was on his 
 left. Mopps, of The Vulture, and Thuggy, of The Hejnpen Jiecord, 
 one of the oldest of the London reporters, the man who saw 
 Thistlewood's head cut off, and Tcnoics loho cut it off, ha, ha ! he 
 darkly boasts over his second bottle, were opposite. The gentle- 
 men of the press were very merry, and the eloquent orators who 
 made speeches half-an-hour long, and expected a verbatim report 
 of their orations, were somewhat mortified to find the next momins: 
 that the whole narrative of the dinner in aid of the funds for the 
 Hospital for Hare Lip was comprised in a twenty-line paragraph. 
 Sio itur ad astra ; only we don't always go starward the same way, 
 and it is a long time in the estimation of the gentlemen of the 
 press before we ourselves become " stars " enough to be reported 
 verbatim. 
 
 Said George to JMopps (who was leading the waiter a terrible 
 life about ice-pudding), " Do you recollect Sir Jasper Goldthorpe's 
 being in the chair here for the Hare Lips in '47 ? " 
 
 " It was not for the Hare Lips," grumbled Mopps, who had 
 secured two slices of pudding from two difierent waiters, and who 
 was not even then quite satisfied. " It was the Institution for 
 supplying Wellington boots to people with wooden legs. And it 
 wasn't at the Freemasons', it was at the London Tavern; and you 
 were there, and ate up all the olives, as usual." 
 
 "Mopps is right," quoth little Topinamboo ; "what a memory 
 you have, Mopps. I remember Sir Jasper's being in the chair 
 well, and how we had to give a column and a half of his speech, 
 for he was such a great gun, and was going to be made a lord, so 
 everybody said." 
 
 "That Gafferer is always making blunders," muttered O'Crawl, 
 who loathed our friend, and would willingly have drowned him in 
 water-souche. "H'what does he want here, saying that he 
 belongs to the press, when he never had anything more to do 
 with a newspaper than to collect advertisements for The I'awn- 
 Irokers' Gazette."
 
 433 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 "Well," continued George, somewhat abashed, "Hare lip or 
 wooden legs, it does not much matter, you need not be so hard 
 upon a fellow. I only wanted to say that I saw Sir Jasper Gold- 
 thorpe to-day." 
 
 " I thought he had hanged himself," growled Mopps, who was 
 putting a composite finish to his dinner, with a plate full of 
 pestachio ice, blauc mange, plovers' eggs, macaroons, and Stilton 
 cheese, and was draining his vast array of wine-glasses lest 
 the waiters carrying them off should find any " ullages " in them 
 for surreptitious tippling on staircases. 
 
 "I heard he had gone into the Charterhouse or the workhouse," 
 Mr. Topinamboo observed. 
 
 " I had heard he had emigrated, and got into trouble about 
 stealing a horse," charitably observed Mr. Thuggy. 
 
 "Sure I heard he was dead," tranquilly observed O'Crawl, 
 slicing a pine-apple. 
 
 " Not the least in the world," resumed George. "I saw him 
 to-day in Eegent Street, quite old and broken, and with his hair 
 as white as snow." 
 
 "Seedy?" asked Mopps. 
 
 "Dreadfully!" 
 
 " I am glad of it," the Samaritan opposite observed, with a 
 savage grin ; " then there is no new swindle up for him to 
 fatten on." 
 
 " He was always a poor mean-spirited creature," chimed in 
 little Topinamboo, who had not courage enough to say bo to a 
 goose, to say nothing of Goldthorpe. 
 
 " And of the very lowest origin," Mr. O'Crawl remarked, dis- 
 dainfully. Mr. O'Crawl was a member of the Fawn-coloured Kid 
 Glove Club, and was the son, people said, of a tinker somewhere 
 in Tipperary. 
 
 " /thought," honest Mr. Thuggy, who was a man of slow and 
 deliberate utterance, said, "that the afiair would have ended 
 criminally. It always struck me that Goldthorpe had a hanging 
 face; he was just like the portrait of the elder Perreau, and 
 walked precisely like Dr. Dodd." 
 
 "Did you see Dr. Dodd hanged, Thuggy?" asked George, 
 desperately diving, in the attempt to say something smart.
 
 TIME WORKS WONDERS. 433 
 
 " I did not, sir," replied, with great solemnity, the attache of 
 The Hempen Record, and finishing his last glass of Madeira ; " but 
 I shall have the very greatest pleasure in seeing you hung, George, 
 and have no doubt that 1 shall, and that the time is not far 
 distant. Tou smell of rue, sir, and have a gallows look ; and if 
 you live anywhere, you ought to take lodgings in a rope-walk." 
 
 George was not very comfortable after this, and felt rather 
 relieved than otherwise when the cloth was drawn, and the port 
 came on, aud the speechifying began, and he could make a show 
 of taking short-hand notes, which, for any useful purpose they 
 served, might just as well have been a catalogue in stenography 
 of the kings of England from the Conquest. 
 
 But we must leave these jovial members of the Fourth Estate, 
 good fellows with all their failings, and liking each other very 
 well, notwithstanding their occasional squabblings. George 
 Gafferer was right, for a wonder, in what he had said concerning 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe. He had seen the Baronet that day in 
 Regent Street, and more than this, the former magnate of the 
 City was to be seen every day in the great fashionable AVest End 
 thoroughfare between four and five in the afternoon. 
 
 One can scarcely tell why, it may be, knowing that an impass- 
 able gulf lay between him and the City, where once he had reigned 
 supreme, he had some feeble idea that the bloody hand which still 
 glowered in his shield gave him a kind of grasp on the polite world. 
 He was, as George described him, wofully "seedy;" but his seedi- 
 ness had now a more woful tinge of faded dandyism in it. The 
 poor old thread-bare coat had a velvet collar, the boots down at 
 heel were of varnished leather, the trousers, frayed at the bottoms, 
 had a stripe down the sides, the gloves were dingy, but they had 
 been of white buckskin. Thus accoutred, with a cheap cane in 
 his shaking hand, he was an object ten times more pitiable than 
 had he been more tattered and torn than the man in the nursery 
 rhyme. He was very changed. lie was very old. He waa 
 scarcely fifty-two, but he looked seventy. He halted in his 
 speech, and forgot people's names. He was a long time in finding 
 his glasses, and when he had found them, had much trouble in 
 reading manuscript even by their aid. His hand-writing, once 
 so bold and firm, was now scarcely legible; he, the great financier, 
 
 F F
 
 434 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 blundered over the slightest arithmetical calculation. A year had 
 done all this. Have you never known instances as terrible of the 
 utter wholesale shipwreck made of men and women by disaster ? 
 They are not the same people, they walk and talk, and eat and 
 drink in a different manner. I knew once a hale, rollicking, 
 lusty, speculative kind of a man, full of talk of dogs and horses, 
 and loose company, and living riotously on the best, who had a 
 year's imprisonment and hard labour, for some fraudulent dealings 
 of his with a Company. I saw him the day after he came forth 
 from his captivity, — he was another man. It was not only that 
 the full beard and moustachios were shaved off, that the eyes 
 were sunken and the cheeks hollow, that he no more drove mail- 
 phaetons or gave dinners at Greenwich, that he was humbled and 
 contrite, but he had somebody else's manner — somebody who 
 skulked rather than walked, — somebody else's voice — and some- 
 body's who for the last twelve months had been apparently resid- 
 ing in the catacombs — somebody else's ways, and tastes, and 
 thoughts. He who, before his incarceration, had been a practical 
 and matter-of-fact sybarite, had turned poet in his captivity, and 
 showed me sentimental stanzas " On being put on the treadmill 
 for scratching my nose," " On having forty-eight hours of solitary 
 confinement for being found in possession of a lead pencil." 
 These changes are horrible. To find, after a year, the woman 
 whom you have known beautiful, haughty, and fascinating, to find 
 her dowdy and slipshod, with a flushed face, a moist lip, a blood- 
 shot eye, and a lock of hair hanging over her forehead, and to be 
 told by a good-natured friend, with a significant conveyance of 
 the finger and thumb to the mouth, and a throwing back of the 
 head, that she has taken to — never mind what. To hear the man 
 whose strong, vigorous, brilliant intellect awed and astonished you 
 twelve months ago, bubble forth maudlin inanities ; to be accosted 
 in a sheepish manner and asked for half-a-crown by the old school- 
 master who used to cane you, — these seem revulsions improbable, 
 nay, almost impossible, yet they occur around us every day. 
 
 Eate had been good to Sir Jasper Goldthorpe in one sense, 
 but had dealt hardly with him in another. Tate had at least 
 decreed that he should emerge from his ruin personally unharmed. 
 The enemies who predicted that he must necessarily be convicted
 
 TIME WORKS WONDERS. 435 
 
 of swindling, robber}', and fraud, were disappointed. He went 
 through the long and tedious ordeal of bankruptcy, not, indeed, 
 without difficulty nor without discredit, but he came out of 
 Basinghall Street safe and sound, and in dread of no penal 
 clauses. It is true that, some of his transactions appearing to 
 the Commissioner as somewhat dubious, his certificate, when 
 granted, was of the third class, was suspended for awhile, and 
 without protection. He had the consolation of being informed 
 by one of the messenger's merry men, that in the then temper of 
 the Chief Commissioner he wouldn't grant a first-class certificate 
 to an angel, even if he could pay fifty shillings in the pound, and 
 that, as things went, a third class was as good as a second class, 
 and infinitely better than no certificate at all. The withholding 
 of protection was a more serious matter ; and, indeed. Sir Jasper 
 was taken in execution ten minutes after he had left the tribunal 
 of fiats and dockets, by the trustees of an infuriated widow at 
 Muswell Hill, of whose jointure he had made ducks and drakes. 
 He sojourned for a season, I am ashamed to say, in Whitecrosa 
 Street ; for his allowance from the creditors while the bankruptcy 
 was pending had stopped, and he was temporarily without even 
 the necessary funds to purchase a habeas corpus for conveyance 
 to the Queen's Bench. For although that famous writ is one of 
 right, and is granted as a matter of course to every sufiering 
 Englishman, it has become, like every other thing in England, 
 purchaseable ; and if you want the palladium of English liberty 
 you must pay for it a matter of some two pounds ten shillings. 
 So, to the Middlesex side of Whitecross Street Prison the baronet 
 was duly taken, after a brief enjoyment of the cordial but costly 
 hospitality of Mr. Nebuchadnezzar Barneywinkle, in Cursitor 
 Street. Mr. Morris Hyams was good enough to ofiieiate as 
 cicerone towards the vile slum where the gaol is situated, and 
 informed Sir Jasper that he had lately had an opportunity of 
 " doing the polite " to his son, " the Capting," who, in Mr. 
 Hyams' opinion was "a real swell, and no mistake." Eather 
 and son were spared the humiliation of meeting within the prison 
 walls ; Captain William had gone straight from Cursitor Street 
 to the more aristocratic place of confinement in Southwark ; but 
 that brave woman, Lady Goldthorpe, came over to the regions of 
 
 F F 2
 
 436 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Barbican so soon as she heard that her Goldie was in trouble, 
 walked with him in the narrow yard, and sat by him in the 
 reeking coffee-room, where the smell of beer, tobacco, steaks that 
 were broiling, and onions that were frying, and the sounds of 
 swearing, quarrelling, and singing, were mingled in one stifling 
 Babel of brawl and greasy vapour. The change had begun to 
 set in with Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, It was a very sad and curious 
 thing to watch him purchasing his petty groceries at the chandler's 
 shop in the yard ; to see him wait anxiously at the grate for the 
 beer-boy ; to see him at the huge roaring fire in the cofiee-room, 
 with the inscription " Dmn spiro, spero" flourished on the mantel 
 above, meekly waiting his turn to cook his half-pound of beef- 
 skirt. He dined at the stewards' table at first, but found that 
 too expensive. He, the erst richest man in the City of London, 
 was now to be seen peeling potatoes. He blacked his own boots. 
 He conciliated the turnkeys. He held a haggard baby while a 
 haggard husband dictated to a haggard wife some letter of vain 
 entreaty to a creditor with a heart as hard as the nether mill- 
 stone. 
 
 Thank God that Pity is not dead ! and if you would behold it 
 in its most beautiful and cheering form, go visit the wards of a 
 debtor's prison. Tou will see the very poor helping the very 
 poorest. Tou will see Pride, all tumbled down from its golden 
 throne, glad to consort with and to assist the very humblest and 
 meanest of mankind. Tou will see athletic men gladly perform- 
 ing menial ofiices, yet with a thoughtfulness and delicacy that 
 make quite a bright sunshine in the gloom and dolour of the 
 House of Sorrow. It is pity — mutual pity and succour and 
 compassion that lead captivity captive, that pad the fetters and 
 smooth tlie straw pallet — that make the spikes on the wall look 
 like a jasmine hedge, and change the bars at the casement into 
 a garden-trellis. I remember hearing once of an insolvent pig- 
 jobber in Horsemonger Lane Goal, who had struck up a friend- 
 ship with a knavish attorney, likewise confined for debt, who had 
 a very pretty pale-faced wife. The little woman used to come to 
 see her husband — vlw arrant scamp who would have stolen the 
 gold setting from his grandmother's false teeth after she was 
 dead — every day. It was bilter wintry weather, and the poor
 
 TIME WOIIKS WUNDhKS. 437 
 
 thing's feet were on the ground. Literally so, in a double sense, 
 for she wore the shamefullest pair of lavender jean boots that 
 ever you saw, and of which the dilapidated soles were sopped in 
 mud one day, and frozen to her toes the next. This pig-jobber 
 had a pair of clumping anklejacks, with soles as thick as the head 
 of an Essayist and Eeviewer — perfectly hideous to the view, but 
 quite weatherworthy. He had no money, and his last pig had 
 been jobbed at a loss, but he followed the pale-faced woman from 
 the yard one day, and by the humane connivance of a turnkey — 
 and there are many humane creatures among turnkeys — decoyed 
 her into the inner lodge, and then and there half persuaded, half 
 forced her to take off the lavender jean rags and to put on the 
 anklejacks. She would have resisted, but he told her, in very 
 bad grammar, that he had children of his own in Essex, and that 
 he knew what it was. " They ain't handsome," quoth the pig- 
 jobber — meaning his chassure, not his offspring — when he had 
 insisted on oflB.ciating as valet de cliamhre, and had laced on the 
 boots — very tightly, for they were a world too large, and the laces 
 had to be wound a dozen times round the little woman's ankles — 
 ^' they ain't handsome, and they'd be better, p'r'aps, for a trifle 
 of cotton stuffed into the toes ; but I'll warrant 'em to stand all 
 the mud in Smiffel on a market morning in Janiwerry." The 
 pig-jobber went about for a fortnight afterwards in a pair of 
 slippers of curious fashion, manufactured by himself, and made, 
 apparently, from a scrap of matting and a fragment of engine 
 hose; but I think that had he gone just then before the Great 
 Commissioner of Insolvent Audit, he would not have been asked 
 many questions as to why he was so shod, and what he had done 
 with his stout Serviceable anklejacks. 
 
 Of course the Eeverend Ernest Goldthorpe could not permit 
 his father to remain for any length of time in Whitecross Street. 
 He was communicated with, and Sir Jasper was transferred by 
 habeas to the Bench. There he had a room to himself, neatly 
 furnished, and was attended by Mrs. Punt, laundress, own sister 
 to Mesdames Grunt, Eunt, Bunt, and Hunt, who " did for him," 
 to use the classical term ; made his bed, washed up his tea-things, 
 stole his tea and sugar, and strongly adjured him, morning and 
 night, to "go up like a man and ha' done with it." Eor Mrs.
 
 438 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Punt -n-isely considered, though to offer the counsel was somewhat 
 against her own interest, that it was the bounden duty of every 
 detenu in the Bench to proceed forthwith to the Insolvent Court 
 and be purged from their debts. " When they stops here for a 
 little," reasoned Mrs. Punt, "they've got money, and pays 
 liberal. Then they goes up like men and has done with it, and 
 gives me a crown d for luck when they gets their discharge. But 
 when they won't file their sheddles, and turns aggerwating, and 
 stops here for years, they've got no money left, or saves it all to 
 bring hactions against the Governor, and they does for their- 
 selves, and they ain't worth tuppence farden. A short life and a 
 merry one for me." Prom which it may be gathered that Mrs. 
 Punt was, after her fashion, a philosopher, and indeed was imbued 
 with principles not very dissimilar to those subsequently em- 
 bodied in the Bethell Bankruptcy Bill. She was an uncleanly 
 female, neither too honest or too sober, but slie had the heart 
 that could feel for another, and was continually getting into 
 trouble with the prison authorities for smuggling ardent spirits 
 into its precincts in a bladder, worn by way of bustle. Within a 
 month a few of Sir Jasper's old friends, the Eeverend Ernest 
 lending his assistance of course, made up a purse among them ; 
 the trustees of the infuriated widow at Muswell Hill were 
 appeased, and Sir Jasper Goldthorpe came out into Belvidere 
 Place, Southwark, quite a free man. We said he bad friends who 
 still clung to him, but they were mostly of those who in earlier 
 days had been reckoned very low down indeed in the scale of his 
 vassals and retainers. The polite world had done with him of 
 course ; the plutocracy of the City had formally repudiated him ; 
 but Argent, his former body-servant, who had set up a lodging- 
 house in St. James's with the savings acquired in his service to 
 Mammon, insisted on giving his old master a bank-note for fifty 
 pounds, while the confidential Mr. Drossleigh informed Sir Jasper 
 that he was instructed by a client to pay him ten pounds per 
 quarter until further notice ; and I have every reason to believe 
 that the confidential Mr. Drossleigh's client was in this instance 
 no other than the confidential Mr. Drossleigh himself. Mis- 
 fortune had not, however, done with the bankrupt baronet. 
 Within a month after his release, he began to mix himself up
 
 TIME WORKS WONDERS. 439 
 
 with all kinds of petty cracked tea-kettle speculations. A few 
 bubble companies were glad of his name in the direction list ; one 
 or two feeble and ephemeral schemes floated languidly for a time 
 in the stagnant atmosphere of Bartholomew Lane, with such 
 wind-bag assistance as he could give them. He even went into 
 the City and bought some ginger on speculation, and failed to 
 realise in time, and sold at a grievous loss. He drew bills which 
 Ernest Goldthorpe declined to accept. He began to scatter his 
 own signature about at three months, although it was now scarcely 
 worth the paper on which it was written. He muddled himself 
 with corn and coals. He had one or two agencies which did not 
 turn out prosperously. A fat and splendid gentleman driving a 
 very splendid mail phseton, with two very splendid and champing 
 grey horses splendidly harnessed — the same splendid gentleman, 
 in fact, whom Mrs. Armytage had seen at Paradise Cottage, 
 Badger Lane, Stockwell, the residence of Ephraim Tigg, Esq., the 
 Easper — and who was indeed Mr. Montmorenci Sheenysson, the 
 fashionable bill-discounter of St. James's Place, entertained some 
 thoughts of employing Sir Jasper, on the strength of his baro- 
 netcy, as a runner, touter, or decoy-duck for young men about 
 town who wanted money, but he found the poor wretched ex- 
 millionaire quite unsuitable for his purpose. " He is aged," Mr. 
 Sheenysson, who was a sporting character, said conclusively ; " he 
 is gone at the knees, and spavined. There is no pace and no 
 action in him ; he is only fit for a night cab, and I am afraid it 
 won't be long before poor old Gr. goes to the knackers." 
 
 He was going thither, or to the dogs, or to the deuce, or on 
 some equally dreary pilgrimage, to his own bewilderment and the 
 despair of his wife, when Mr. Sims from Coger's Inn once more 
 appeared upon the stage. Months had passed since Mr. Sims had 
 made a momentous appearance in the lodging-house parlour in 
 Praed Street, Paddington. It was then that, in a few words, he 
 had relieved Sir Jasper's mind from a great burden, that he had 
 extricated him from an awful peril, that he had taken away the 
 sword of Damocles so long impending over him, that he had 
 rolled away for ever the stone like unto that which overhung the 
 sultan's bed, and for years had tlu-eatened to topple over and 
 crush him. It was done in a moment — done in that lodging-
 
 440 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 house parlour. Lady Goldthorpe was horror-struck, but inevit- 
 ably grateful. "Goldthorpe," he said, "Hugh Desborough is 
 come to save bis old partner from wearing fetters on his ankles, 
 and working on the roads at Sydney. You have been a fool, and 
 worse than a fool, but it is very long ago, and let bygones be 
 bygones. Do you know these bills ? " 
 
 He took out an oblong packet of papers, yellow and crumpled, 
 and fly-blown, with signatures crossing the body of the manu- 
 scripts at right angles. 
 
 " Good God ! " cried the baronet ; "they are the papers which 
 were held by that woman." 
 
 " They are ; they are all forgeries, as you know. There is no 
 statute of limitation for felony. There are twenty years' trans- 
 portation in every one of those scraps of worthless paper ; they 
 have been got from our little friend, never mind how. I got 
 them. I want to get something else from her, and will if I can. 
 And now, my friend, we will burn all these little acceptances." 
 
 He took the oblong packet — it was summer — and thrust it 
 between the bars of the bright little grate, with its trumpery 
 garniture of paper and tinsel shavings. He kindled a match, and 
 thrust it into the heap, and away up the chimney, with a thin 
 flame, and a thick cloud of white smoke, and a few bright sparks, 
 went garniture of paper and tinsel shavings. Judge, Jury, Counsel 
 for the Prosecution, sentence, hulks, chain gang, disgrace, and 
 ruin. Sir Jasper Goldthorpe was free, and to the world as inno- 
 cent as the babe unborn. 
 
 He drew a long breath, and put his hand to his heart. 
 
 " Tou have nothing more of the same kind out," asked Mr. 
 Sims ; " nothing more at three months, five-and-twenty-years old, 
 with a little mistake in the handwriting, have you ? " 
 
 " Nothing, so help me Heaven ! " 
 
 " Then, oh be joyful," observed Mr. Sims, scattering the 
 blackened embers of the paper with the poker. " I should just 
 like to know, however, how much Mrs. A. has had out of you on 
 the strength of those valuable securities." 
 
 " Thousands, thousands," murmured the baronet, rocking him- 
 self to and fro. 
 
 " How many thousands, — ten ? "
 
 TIME "WORKS WONDERS. 441 
 
 " More, much more ! " 
 
 "Whew!" and Mr. Sims indulged in a prolonged whistle. 
 " Of all the artful little parties I ever heard of, our friend wa3 
 certainly the artfuUest. AYhat a pity it is she could not resist 
 her Impulse." 
 
 " "Where is she now ? " asked Sir Jasper. 
 
 •'' Abroad ; she will never come home ; she is quite safe, but 
 scarcely sound. She is very ill, but I have not quite done with her 
 
 yet." 
 
 And it was thus Sir Jasper escaped dreadful consequences. 
 
 Think it not strange for me to have dismissed his deliverance 
 so rapidly. In life such eventualities are quite as instantaneous. 
 'Tis the merest chance, the turn of a hair, the weight of a grain 
 of sand, whether black or red turns up, whether escape or catas- 
 trophe come. I knew a prosperous merchant once, who told me 
 that in early youth he was dismissed from the great counting- 
 house, where he was an office-boy, dismissed through no fault of 
 bis own, and left friendless and almost destitute in the Great 
 Desert of London. He knew not what to do, or where to go to 
 seek employment. He had been in the habit of paying in money 
 and drawing money out at his employer's bank ; he had been in 
 the habit of obtaining fresh cheque-books for the firm when 
 needed. A mad, desperate thought came over him one morning, 
 when he felt most hungry and most forlorn. Should he go to the 
 bank, ask for a cheque-book — the clerks might not know of his 
 dismissal — forge a draft for money, get it cashed, and fly to 
 America with the proceeds. He paced the great hall of the 
 General Post Office, revolving this wicked project in his mind. 
 He was on the point of yielding to the devil that was within him, 
 when, as it seemed to him, the expression of a human counte- 
 nance came over the dial of the Post Office great clock. It 
 seemed to warn, to conjure, to implore him to turn back from 
 his black design. By God's mercy he did so; and, although he 
 had no bed and no supper that night, he obtained employment 
 the very next day, and when he told me the story he was a rich 
 man. But his honesty had trembled in the balance, and a hair's 
 breadth, or the weight of a sand-grain, might have turned the
 
 442 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 scale. " To be or not to be," translated into " Do or not to do," 
 is one of the swiftest but one of the fiercest conflicts that has ever 
 waged in the human heart. And the decision is made in a mo- 
 ment. I will marrj Miss Jones, I won't marry Miss Jones, 
 either the one or the other, and you vault into Paradise or are 
 plunged into Tophet for life. The most sensible determination to 
 come to is, perhaps, not to marry Miss Jones ; tell her that you 
 will regard her as a sister, and you have no idea how fond she will 
 be of her dear brother. 
 
 This was Mr. Sims' first active deliverance of Sir Jasper from 
 his self-created Philistines. " You must get out of this, Gold- 
 thorpe," he said, when the Baronet sheepishly confided to him his 
 wretched embarrassments caused by corn and coal and bubble 
 schemes. " You are not fit for business, and business is not fit 
 for you ; you'll get yourself into some mess, and write your own 
 name or somebody else's once too often. You must do the quiet 
 gentleman, and live upon your means. I'll find the means, and 
 speak to Lady Gr. about it." 
 
 Mr. Sims found the means and spoke to Lady G. A ten- 
 roomed house was taken at Kentish Town. Mr. Sims had it 
 neatly but not expensively furnished from a cheap upholsterer's 
 in Tottenham Court Eoad ; and Lady Goldthorpe — there is no 
 use in disguising the fact — took to letting lodgings. But so far 
 as the house at Kentish Town was concerned, the hereditary 
 dignity was dropped. It was Mr. and Mrs. Mordaunt, who were 
 happy to let apartments furnished to single gentlemen, with 
 partial board if required, — not Sir Jasper and Lady Goldthorpe. 
 The single gentlemen came, and had decent accommodation for 
 their ten or twelve shillings a week. One gentleman from the 
 Custom House insisted on practising on the trombone early in 
 the morning and late at night, and had speedy warning in conse- 
 quence. Another was troubled with fits, and fell down stairs 
 regularly every Sunday morning. A third was an entomologist, 
 and formed a collection of live cockroaches, which crawled about 
 the house generally in an embarrassing manner. Then there was 
 one gentleman who turned out to be a swindler, and brought a 
 trunk, neatly packed with bricks ; and when he went away, with-
 
 TIME WORKS WONDERS. 4-43 
 
 out paying his rent, took with lum a few books, chimney orna- 
 ments, and other articles of trifling value. But, on the whole, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Mordaunt got on very satisfactorily with their 
 single-gentlemen lodgers, sat rent free, and were enabled to lay 
 by some little surplus. To see Mrs. Mordaunt, once Lady Gold- 
 thorpe, bustling about the house with its cheap furniture, painted 
 washband-stands, and printed druggets ; making out the little bills 
 of her single-gentlemen lodgers, wrangling in the little kitchen with 
 an Irish servant, with a face like a kidney potato, who had an in- 
 corrigible propensity for black-leading her face as well as the 
 stoves, and with her successor, a stolid young person from the 
 workhouse, aged fourteen, who was sulky and lazy, and obstinate 
 and vicious, and who was once detected in eating raw beefsteak ; 
 to watch her parleying on the door-step with a gentleman in high- 
 lows, corduroys, and a seal-skin cap, who came with a donkey and 
 sold cauliflowers : you would have had much difficulty in recog- 
 nising the magnificent Lady Goldthorpe in her palace at Onyx 
 Square, thi'oning it on silken couches and sumptuous carpets, 
 scattering her gold about her in boundless profusion, waited upon 
 by giants in plush and powder and gold lace. The world sees 
 changes just as curious. One thinks of Napoleon at St. Helena, 
 squabbling over the quantity and quality of his rations, grumbling 
 because his cocked hat had lost its nap, and his uniform coat was 
 growing white at the seams. And yet I think that Lady Gold- 
 thorpe was happier now than when she lived in Onyx Square — 
 almost as happy, indeed, as when she was the tenant of a back 
 parlour of a little shop in a petty country town. 
 
 The Reverend Ernest Goldthorpe allowed his parents a hun- 
 dred and fifty pounds a year; the pittance was paid to them 
 weekly ; for Ernest had an uneasy sensation that his father would 
 begin to speculate so soon as he had any considerable amount of 
 money in his hands. The young gentleman in the Eoreign Ofiice 
 was reduced to the dire necessity of living upon his salary, which 
 to a young gentleman in the Foreign Office is a very dire neces- 
 sity indeed. I am constrained to say that he thought himself 
 very much ill-used by his father, that he imagined himself to have 
 been in some degree defrauded of a share in a splendid inherit- 
 ance, and that he bore some malice to the author of his days in
 
 44 i THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMJION. 
 
 consequence. He could no longer be called Bullion Goldtliorpe 
 by his fellow-clerks. Livery-stable keepers, tailors, cigar-dealers, 
 did not compete for his custom. He was no longer a young man 
 of expectations. He alluded to bis degenerate papa as seldom as 
 possible, and devoted himself with much ardour to the cultivation 
 of his opportunities at evening parties, in the hope of marrying a 
 young lady with money. As nature had endowed him with a 
 smooth pretty face and a pleasing tenor voice, and as he had 
 acquired the difficult art of parting his hair up and down the 
 middle, even from the nape of his neck to within an inch of his 
 eyebrows, so neatly and so accurately as to make you think that 
 his head was in halves, and was about to fall asunder, he became 
 very popular at Brompton and Kensington. The under-graduate, 
 ■who was of a studious turn, sensibly left the University and took 
 a tutorship in a private family ; he wrote dutifully but rarely to 
 Kentish Town : he must bear his hard lot, he said. A hard lot 
 indeed, to be bred up in the hope of your father leaving you fifty 
 thousand pounds some day, and to find out suddenly that he is 
 not worth sixpence. The Eton boy was kept at Eton by his stern, 
 conscientious brother, who destined him for the Church ; but I 
 am afraid that Dr. Hawtrey did not spare him so frequently as he 
 might have done when he was a son of JNIammon, and tlaat his 
 tutor was not very much inclined to condone his ofiencea when he 
 remembered that the quarterly bills for his board and instruction 
 must be kept within very narrow limits. It sometimes occurred 
 to his youthful companions to call him a beggar, whereupon he 
 fought them, and thrashed them or was thrashed, as capricious 
 Eortune chose to decide. It was all for the best. Alfred had 
 very little pocket-money now, but if he had had more he might 
 have injured his constitution by excesses in sweetstufi" and shrub. 
 The wind is tempered even to the shorn schoolboy, and the 
 Etonian made up for less luxury by more football and more paper 
 chases. 
 
 The sailor abroad had his profession to depend upon. He was 
 a lieutenant now, and could live on his pay. Just previous to the 
 Smash he had been, according to custom, drawing bills with some 
 prodigality upon his ; papa. Matters looked somewhat serious 
 when those documents were retui-ned protested ; but his Captain,
 
 TIME WORKS WONDERS. 445 
 
 who was rich and liked the young man, compounded with his 
 creditors, and lent him money to liquidate the composition. So 
 all that Lieutenant Goldthorpe, R.N., had to wish for was a good 
 sharp war, which would bring him a little lame and a little prize- 
 money. 
 
 Captain "William Goldthorpe, late of the Dragoons, for he pru- 
 dently managed to sell his commission just before it lapsed through 
 his having overstayed his leave, made his appearance in due course 
 at the Insolvent Debtors' Court. His debts, I need scarcely say, 
 were prodigious ; his assets might have been put into one of those 
 walnut shells which hold Limerick gloves, silver thimbles, and 
 miniature scissors. Where the price of the Captain's commission 
 went to was never correctly known. He was asked so many 
 questions at the Insolvent Court, and bullied on so many sides by 
 enraged creditors, that this one was somehow passed by. Jack 
 Butts charitably spread about the story that he owed all the 
 money and more to the regimental agents ; but friendly George 
 Gafferer darkly insinuated that the quondam Captain had made a 
 private purse for himself. His case was a very flagrant one, and 
 would have fully justified a remand for eighteen months; but for- 
 tunately for Willy Goldthorpe, the Commissioner before whom 
 he was examined happened to be himself in a chronically insolvent 
 condition, and had recently passed through his own Court, and 
 beautified the sepulchre of his debts with his own whitewash. 
 His Honour held bill discounters of every degree in utter abomi- 
 nation ; so when the Captain's schedule came to be discussed, he 
 mainly confined himself to blowing up the gentlemen who lent 
 money at sixty per cent. ; and, in discharging William Goldthorpe, 
 told him that he left that Court without a stain on his character, 
 with the esteem and commiseration of all who knew him, and 
 with the earnest expression of a hope on his, the Commissioner's, 
 part, that he would be able to retrieve his fallen fortune and em- 
 ploy his brilliant talents for the benefit of that society of which 
 he bade fair to be a conspicuous ornament. It is thus that some 
 of us do not get our deserts, and that a great many of us do 
 'scape the whipping. As to the other poor rogues, let them be 
 triced up to the halberds, and, drummer, see that you warm their 
 shouldei's thoroughly — the rascals ! — with wholesome whiocord.
 
 446 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Captain Goldthorpe — once a Captain, always a Captain — drove 
 down to Lis club in the rapidest of Hansoms, gave the driver half- 
 a-crown instead of a shilling for his fare, had a very nice little 
 dinner, drank a bottle of very sound Pomard, and afterwards, over 
 his ^Seltze^-^Yater and Cognac and the most fragrant of Havan- 
 nahs, fput the smoking-room in a roar with an account of his 
 recent ordeal, of the humours of the Commissioner, and specially 
 of the examination of an insolvent umbrella-maker, with a club- 
 foot and an impediment in his speech, who, after undergoing a 
 stern and terrifying lecture, had been remanded for six months by 
 the indignant judicial functionary, who had recently gone through 
 Lis own Court, for the heinous offence of contracting a debt of 
 nine pounds seven shillings without reasonable expectations of 
 payment. A hardened wretch, this umbrella-maker, clearly ; and 
 you see there are some people who do get their deserts, and are 
 soundly swinged by outraged Justice, 
 
 Captain Goldthorpe consoled himself very well under his mis- 
 fortunes. He had a handsome figure, a good constitution, very 
 long moustachios, and a cheerful disposition. He could ride and 
 drive, and fence, and shoot, and box, and by a large circle of 
 acquaintances was deemed pre-eminently a good fellow. He was 
 not compelled, so far as his adventures in this chronicle are set 
 down, to turn riding-master or veterinary surgeon or commission 
 agent. The Captain went abroad. In the gay circles of Paris, 
 in the cheerful Passages of Brussels, but chiefly at those delightful 
 places on the Ehine where a medical regimen is combined with 
 the pursuit of roulette and rouge et noir, Captain Goldthorpe found 
 diversion after bis many troubles. He ate of the best, and drank 
 of the best, and rode blood horses, and was highly popular 
 amongst scores of good fellows and dashing and adventurous 
 spirits like himself. Time works wonders, and a great many 
 changes take place in twelve months. In eighteen hundred and 
 fifty-two Captain Goldthorpe, principally of the Ehine, was in a 
 transition state. I think the state he had left was that of the 
 pigeon, and I am afraid that the state into which he was entering 
 was that of the hawk. He was as good-natured as ever, and 
 would have written to his parents and assisted them, only he was 
 such a bird of passage, and he had not time, and it was a bore
 
 TIME WORKS WOXDERS. 447 
 
 you see, and lie could not do mucli now for the poor old governor, 
 and lie had lost the address in Kentish Town ; and so he did not 
 write, and at the end of the year for aught he cared for the father 
 that begat, or the mother that bore him, he might have been a 
 foundling. 
 
 These are the separations that money, or the loss of money, 
 makes between parents and children, between kinsmen and kins- 
 women, and schoolfellows and old friends. These are the things 
 that make life terrible, and change flesh and blood into stone and 
 warm blood into brine, and turn our hair grey before the time.
 
 CHAPTEE XXXIV. 
 
 TJPWAEDS AND DOWNWARDS TO AN END. 
 
 " There is a sore evil wbicli I have seen under the sun, namely, 
 riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. But those 
 riches perish by evil travail, and he begetteth a son and there is 
 nothing in his hand." The Preacher is secular as well as sacred, 
 and he may surely be quoted without irreverence in a work about 
 worldlings, ifor who knew so much of the world and its way as 
 King Solomon, the Jewish merchant, as Mr. Euskin called him, 
 the Sir Charles Coldstream, the used-up, blas6 sovereign, rather, 
 he may be called, of antiquity. He who found that all was 
 vanity, and turned to behold AVisdom in Madness and Folly, and 
 held that there should be no remembrance of the Wise any more 
 than of the Tool for ever, and that there was nothing better than 
 that a man should rejoice in his own works, and that money 
 answereth all things, must have been acquainted with Mammon, 
 and known the power and the importance of silver and golden 
 dross. 
 
 Sir Jasper Goldthorpe had kept riches to his hurt, and had lost 
 it through evil travail, and had begotten sons, and there was 
 nothing in their hands. And yet Sir Jasper Goldthorpe walked 
 Eegent Street, and was a Baronet there. At home, in Milliken 
 Street, Kentish Town, he was Mrs. Mordaunt's the lodging-house 
 keeper's husband, at whom the Irish servant girl, with a face like 
 a kidney potato, and the young person from the workhouse who 
 ate raw beef, jeered. The single-gentlemen lodgers called him the 
 man of the house, and were under the general impression that he 
 cleaned the knives and blacked the boots. He had been seen 
 fetching in the beer from the Bag o' Nails hostelry round the 
 corner. Chype, the landlord, was of opinion that he had been 
 unfortunate iu the retail shoe trade. He was held in no estima-
 
 UP\VAUD3 AND :X)V,-.\-\VAUL)3 TO AX END. 449 
 
 tion bj tlie butcher. The greengrocer disdained him and called 
 him " a iDarty." The baker hesitated to execute his orders without 
 instructions from ]Mrs. Mordaunt. The tax-collector did not lift 
 liis hat to him. The gas was rude to him. The water rates said 
 in au imperious voice that he could not call again wlien the ex- 
 millionaire meekly opened the door to that official. He had taken 
 to snuffing, but he had no credit at the tobacco shop. The omnibus 
 conductors at the Ejre Arms, when he purposed travelling east- 
 ward, called him " Guv'n'r," and enjoined him to look alive. He 
 was thoroughly despised, for he Avas in the scrape, as Mr. Kiug- 
 iake has it, of being alive and old and poor. Not one of the 
 paltry and shabby beings with whom he had commerce dreamt 
 that this had been a King of Alen, a captain of fifties and of 
 thousands ; a potentate who could write Yo el rey — who could 
 compel friendship and adulation, and flattery and lip-service by the 
 lifting of his little finger ; wlio could raise men to riches or fling 
 them into beggary by a stroke of his pen. Mr. Mordaunt, of 
 Milliken Street, was the shabbiest of old broken-down hacks dis- 
 carded from the chariot of Fortune. He was not richer in Eegeut 
 Street, but he enjoyed more consideration. The milliners' gii'ls, 
 gossiping in their workrooms us he tottered past, called him a fine 
 old gentleman. He ventured sometimes so far as the Burlington 
 Arcade, and would be looked upon by its idle frequenters as a 
 nobleman whose eccentricities led him to dress so shabbily. Now 
 and then some old patrician acquaintance coming from the clubs 
 or alighting from his carriage would recognise and hold him in 
 chat for a minute or- so, and returning home say, " I met poor old 
 Goldthorpe to-day ; he is quite Avorn. out." He was known at 
 some half-dozen' shops in the purlieus of Eegent Street, and the 
 shop people bowed to him and called him Sir Jasper. He belonged 
 to a little club held at a tavern in Beak Street, whose members 
 were chiefly poor artists, struggling newspaper men, briefless 
 barristers, patientless surgeons, with one or two rich Eegent 
 Street tradesfolk, and these jolly dogs were kind to him and made 
 much of him, partly for fun, partly through pity, and partly through 
 that odd esteem for a man with a handle to his name which lingers 
 in the British breast. There is something in knowing a live 
 Baronet, even if he be not worth twopence-halfpenny in the world. 
 
 G G
 
 4o0 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 Sir Jasper would meet his club acquaintances in Regent Street, 
 and they would take his arm and show him off, and introduce him 
 to their acquaintances as a kind of lion. He was wont to brag in 
 a feeble manner of his past riches, and to point with tremulous 
 cane to such and such a haughty one rolling by in his chariot, who 
 affected not to know him now, but whom he had lifted from the 
 mud, and whose fortune he had made. He throve on these miser- 
 able little vanities, grew quite gay and jaunty towards five o'clock, 
 and would lift his napless hat in defiance to the rolling chariots 
 for all that their occupants tiirned their heads the other way. 
 '' The obtrusiveness of that man is disgusting," quoth Tom Tad- 
 pole on his hired hack, when the Baronet persisted in saluting 
 him ; " he still thinks he is one of us." " The bankrupt old 
 beggar," muttered the envious Mopps, who always took a walk in 
 Eegent Street on fine afternoons, in order to glower at and to 
 curse the people who seemed richer than he. " He had the im- 
 pudence to bow to me the other day while I was talking to Mr. 
 Secretary Calipash, on the strength, forsooth, of having met me 
 at dinner ; he was always a cad and made long speeches. I hate 
 long speeches and cads." Thus Mopps. 
 
 It would have been twenty times better for this wretched old 
 man had his name really been Mordaunt, and had he and his wife 
 really been born to the condition of letting lodgings, and had 
 his baronetcy faded away like Aluaschar's vision of riches. But 
 it was not to be so. He clung to his baronetcy with a feeble 
 fierceness. He grudged that it should descend to his son — his 
 cruel, cold-hearted, upstart son, he called him now. Towards five 
 o'clock he would slink into a little pastrycook's shop in Cranbourne 
 Steeet, and in whose back parlour he had a chop, potatoes, and 
 a cup of coffee for ninepence ; or he would lurk into a cheap 
 Erench ordinary behind the Quadrant, where he would feed on 
 leather and prunella, or stale fish dressed up with cunning sauces. 
 The waiter at Bagaboshe's restaurant called him "Milor," and 
 when trade was dull he would discourse with that servitor, who 
 was a Swiss by an Italian mother and a Polish father, on his 
 bygone prosperity and the ingratitude of the world. Then, unless 
 it happened to be club night, he would fade away into a tavern in 
 "Warwick Street and drink his cold giu-and-water, and prattle
 
 UPWARDS AND DOWXWAKDS TO AN END. 451 
 
 about tlie city articles iu the newspapers, and be looked up to as 
 a sort of second-hand oracle by the small tradesmen in the neigh- 
 bourhood. There was a barmaid who was compassionate to him, 
 and gave liim snufF from a large Scotch mull for nothing. He 
 would reach home by omnibus by ten o'clock, and be put to bed 
 by Lady Goldthorpe ; and sometimes, when he had taken a little 
 too much gin-and-water, he would cry, and take the stumps of 
 his many cheque-books from their drawer, and maunder over 
 them in a pitiable manner. We will drop the curtain, if you 
 please, upon this not too cheerful spectacle. 
 
 And Magdalen Hill, where was she ? Why, was she not by 
 the side of her old friend, her old guardian ? Magdalen had gone 
 away. And, as usual, pride had done it all. In the very earliest 
 days of Sir Jasper's bankruptcy, Letitia Salusbury had sought 
 her out with offers of assistance. Lord Chalkstonehengist's 
 daughter was as generous as she was good ; she would have given 
 her ears away ; she would have pawned her earrings to help any 
 one in distress. " What can I do for you ? " was her first ques- 
 tion to Magdalen. " Tour fortune, I know, is gone, but mine 
 remains. Tou know that papa is very rich, and that he will do 
 anything I ask him. Only say what we are to do when this 
 dreadful botheration of a bankruptcy is over." So far all pro- 
 mised well ; but the two girls had not been a quarter of an hour 
 together before they had a fierce, hot, deadly quarrel. It was 
 about Euthyn Pendragon. That exceedingly vulgar person once 
 more came on the tapis, and with his clumsy feet was once more 
 the means of tearing the carpet to pieces. I believe that Letitia 
 pressed Magdalen to marry him. I fear that Miss Hill spoke 
 with even fiercer scorn and disdain of the ex-curate than had 
 hitherto been her wont. She accused him of living on Letitia's 
 bounty. " Tou gave him money in the lodging-house, you know 
 you did," she said, in passionate tones. The two women wrangled 
 as only proud and passionate women with no listeners by can 
 wrangle. They parted not to meet again. Letitia flung away 
 in a rage, telling Magdalen that she might starve for a proud and 
 obstinate wretch. Miss Hill, with drawn-up form, white face, 
 and quivering lip, said things not so violent, but that were more 
 pointed and left deeper marks behind them. And could ladies 
 
 G o 2
 
 4. J 2 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 \vlio had moved in the best society so wrangle ? I thought 
 it was only the common people who quarrelled. " Tush ! " 
 answers Senor Asmodeus, " if you will wait while I unroof this 
 house in Belgravia, you shall see my Lady fling the silver tea-pot 
 at my Lord's head, and the Honourable Mrs. Lamb box her 
 grown-up daughter's ears ; and hear Avhat a fine clatter of 
 crockeryware is made when the breakfast table is overturned ; 
 and what an edifying war of words is waged in that very low life 
 which is sometimes carried on above stairs." Be quiet, lame 
 Devil, you are but a deformed cynic, invented by a grinning 
 Frenchman; and it must be only the common people who quarrel 
 and throw things at one another. The breach between Letitia 
 and Magdalen was not to be healed, and the whole Goldthorpe 
 family suffered through that deadly feud. Sir Jasper was in- 
 clined to be querulous, and to murmur at the injury which 
 Magdalen's stupid pride, as he called it, had inflicted on his 
 prospects of assistance from the wealthy Lord Chalkstouehengist 
 and his open-handed daughter. His wife, as wives will, took her 
 husband's part ; and there was sullen animosity in the wretched 
 little household even before they left Paddington. So Magdalen 
 went away, stern, proud, and unforgiving. She sold her trinkets, 
 she sold almost all her clothes, save the black garb she continued 
 to wear in remembrance of the dead Hu£:h. She advertised, with 
 a grim persistency, day after day in the Times for a situation as 
 governess. She got one at last in a school at Clapham, where 
 she was to teach everything, and have thirty pounds a year and 
 her washing. The place was the wretchedest of wretched ones. 
 Tlie schoolmistress was the daughter of a cheesemonger, and had 
 in early life been a lady's maid. She could not spell ; the 
 writing-master made out her quarterly bills ; but she was scru- 
 pulously particular as to references, and in taking only the 
 daughters of gentlemen as pupils. She had a parlour-boarder 
 at a hundred guineas a year, who was forty years old, and mad, 
 and used to cut her dress into snippets with a pair of scissors, 
 and wolf her food with her fingers, and wander about the house 
 with her hair down like a Banshee, nearly frightening the scholars 
 into fits. There was a French governess who almost set the 
 house on fire about once a week with reading novels in bed ; and
 
 UPWARDS AND DOWNWAUDS TO AN END. 453 
 
 an English teacher, Avho maintained an amatory correspondence 
 with a dancing-master, and subsequently with one of the big boys 
 at Dr. Wackerbath's establishment close by. The goveruesses 
 all hated one another ; and the schoolmistress bullied everybody, 
 from the servants to the parlour-boarders ; and in this educational 
 Inferno Miss Magdalen Hill passed eight months. It was good 
 for her pride. Perhaps it is good for pomp to take physic some- 
 times and repent. Did she ? I am afraid not. She was as cold 
 and self-possessed as ever, and went about her duties in a strict, 
 unbending way. She bore the abuse of the coarse, avaricious hag 
 who ruled the school, and the envy aud malice of the shrewish 
 women who were her fellow-governesses, and the ceaseless teasiug 
 of half a hundred tiresome girls. She was very cool aud calm 
 without ; but I think, nevertheless, there was still a raging fever 
 within her. The Spanish Inquisition is abolished, as you know ; 
 the thumb-screws and the scavenger's daughter in the Tower lie 
 idle ; the Smithfield fires are quenched ; the pillory is headless ; 
 the stocks are legless : but believe me, there are many thousand 
 genteel stucco-covered houses in this fair metropolis aud its 
 suburbs, where the amenities of the Inquisition are practised all 
 the year round, and the torture-chamber has its tenants, every 
 day.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 THE AGONX OF TLOEENCE ARMTTAGE : STAGE THE LAST. 
 
 Tes, she had been a great traveller. Amiens, St. Lazare, 
 Lewes, Kirkdale, Kilmainliam, La Bourbe, Mannheim, Milan, 
 Preston, Kice ; from Lancashire to Lombardy, from the Maritime 
 Alps to the Sussex Downs, the little feet, sometimes against their 
 will, had wandered. She had been in twenty gaols, and had un- 
 dergone twenty sentences. She, the gay and luxurious, had been 
 accustomed from her youth upwards to stone floors and iron doors, 
 to prison gaolers and prison fare. To be arrested and tried, and 
 kept in captivity for robbing and swindling, were no novelties to 
 her. They were the little reverses incidental to a career such as 
 hers had been. It is not surprising she did not talk about them 
 in polite society. "We are all of us acquainted with some little 
 topics which we don't mention in the drawing-room. We don't 
 feel it essential to enlighten every chance acquaintance about our 
 wig and our cancer, about our false teeth and our pawn tickets ; 
 about our brother in Colney Hatch, and our uncle who was 
 hanged. We are very apt to prate about the skeleton in our 
 neighbour's cupboard, but do not feel inclined to make a show of 
 the very neat specimen of osteology that our own private cabinet 
 may contain. We remember what Napoleon said about domestic 
 laundry-work, and hold our tongues, and are wise. I never yet 
 heard a gentleman volunteer a full, true, and particular account 
 of how he was kicked in Pall MaU, or a lady disclose the precise 
 circumstances which led to her wearing false fronts. 
 
 If I were to give you a detailed account of the career ot 
 Plorence Armytage, it would swell this work to thrice its destined 
 size. If I were to enumerate, even in the driest catalogue- 
 maker's fashion, her escapades, her misdeeds, her triumphs, and 
 her humiliations, the catalogue would fiU a volume. When the
 
 THE AGONY OF FLORENCE AHMYTAGE. 455 
 
 man, Agar, was under cross-examinatiou at a famous trial, the 
 advocate, thinking to pose him, asked him how he earned his live- 
 lihood during the past twenty years. He answered, confidently, 
 "By crime." It was the naked simple truth. Precisely the same 
 may be said of Florence. By crime, and crime alone, she bad 
 lived for vears. Eeticence and evasion are of no use now ; it was 
 tempus abire for her. The truth must be told about the woman. 
 This poor little popinjay must be stripped of its silken rags and 
 golden gewgaws, and exposed as a poor trembling forked radish 
 of a criminal as she was. These are hard words to say, but they 
 must be said. She had been a liar and a thief from her cradle. 
 She had been expelled from innumerable schools for misconduct. 
 She robbed the aunt who brought her up. But in all the anguish 
 of all the punishments her sins brought upon her, she was always 
 obstinate and defiant. She had a fatal gift for caligraphy, and 
 forged her school-fellows' names in her earliest copy-books. How, 
 when she went to India, the passengers in the ship lost rings and 
 money; how winners at play suddenly found their stakes dis- 
 appear ; how at the up-country station where she lived with her 
 husband, wretched native servants were discharged for robberies 
 which she had committed ; how, when she came back to Europe, 
 she plundered and cheated right and left ; how many ladies' 
 maids were discharged for the sake of trinkets which she had pur- 
 loined ; how many tradespeople in England and on the Continent, 
 bankers, hotel-keepers, money-changers were fleeced : but it is 
 useless to pursue the sickening chronicle. The edifice that she 
 had built up, glistening white as snow without, black as hell 
 within, had toppled down upon her miserable head and crushed 
 her. There had come an end to the lying, and cogging, and fawn- 
 ing, and deceiving. Under one of her innumerable false names 
 she had been tried at the Court of Assizes of the Seine for forgery 
 and jewel robbery, and had been sentenced to twenty years' hard 
 labour. 
 
 It would have been easy for the authorities to have tried her 
 under her own name, which they knew perfectly well, and for far 
 graver crimes. They could have had her head off her shoulders 
 in a trice : her guilt was patent to at least a dozen shrewd lawyers 
 and police spies. Simon Lefranc, the examining Judge, the Pro-
 
 456 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 curator- General, the President of tlie Criminal Court, knew well 
 that she was a murderess, and had killed a man. But she had 
 listened in time to judicial argument and judicial persuasion, and 
 compromised with justice, and saved her head. At the nick of 
 time her Influence bestirred himself. Her Influence was powerful, 
 but the scandal created by her crimes would have been so horrible 
 had all that had been, known about her been published, that her 
 Influence, potent as he was, was forced to be cautious. Her In- 
 fluence could do almost, but not quite, everything in France. A 
 week since her last examination by ]Monsieur Plon had passed, 
 ■when her Influence was admitted in the dead of night into her 
 cell. A close carriage had brought him from a side door in the 
 liue de Eivoli to the Quai de I'Horloge. Her Influence said 
 little, and made no noise. He was wrapped in a cloak, and no 
 one saw his face. It was the last time that Florence and her 
 Influence were to meet on earth. 
 
 " Tenez, madame, il faut en finir" was said to her in a voice 
 accustomed to command. 
 
 "You used to call me Florence," she remarked bitterly. 
 "It was long ago, the end has come, ask what you want." 
 " Set me free." 
 
 " It is impossible ; you must be imprisoned for twenty 
 years." 
 
 " Tou are very diff'erent from what you used to be. Do 
 you forget the old days r " 
 
 " I remember them too well. "What I tell you is for the 
 best. Tou must be sentenced for twenty years, et puis on verra?^ 
 He went away, and she saw him no more ; but orders were given 
 that night that not a day of her sentence was to be remitted, that 
 no prayer or petition from her was to be received, and that her 
 name was never to be mentioned in high places. 
 
 " It was time to put a stop to her," her Influence said, as he 
 sat that night smoking his cigar, with his feet on the fender, 
 '' She has played the diable a quatre long enough. If we could 
 have another Troy to-morrow, that woman would burn it down." 
 
 Florence's compromise with Justice was not without some 
 sacrifice on her part. Tlic authorities wanted an oblong packet 
 of papers from her. After a last sliarp struggle she gave them 
 
 I
 
 THE AGONY OP FLORENCE AUJIYTAGE. 457 
 
 up. There were certain little revelations too concerning a por- 
 trait in a golden locket. These revelations she made, — thev were 
 probably no secrets to her Influence. The secret of her last and 
 greatest crime was now buried in her own breast. It was safe 
 from the lawyers and police spies. It was safe with her Influence ; 
 it was safe with her accomplice. A young English desperado, 
 who had been tried for burglary and murder at Chaillot more 
 than two years before, who narrowly escaped the capital penalty, 
 and died from a wound he received in an attempt to escape from 
 the galleys at Belleriport, whither he had been sent to hard labour 
 for life. How clever she had been to avoid being arraigned with 
 him ! — and what had all her cleverness come to now ? 
 
 Her disappearance from England was but a nine days' wonder. 
 In the polite world she had always been but a bird of passage, 
 and, for aught they knew, she might be enjoying herself in Paris 
 or Italy, or in the East even. Only Lord Carnation happening 
 to be in Paris in the autumn of '51, and strolling into the Court 
 of Assizes of the Seine one morning, to see if he could get up a 
 little useful cramming as to the French judicial system, saw sit- 
 ting on the bench of the accused, between two gendarmes, a woman 
 with yellow hair, and in the coarse prison dress, the sight of whose 
 fac6 made him turn white as a sheet, and tremble all over. The 
 yellow-haired woman's eye met his as he stood among the auditory, 
 and a livid spot came to each of her cheeks, and she grinned a 
 ghastly grin. But the woman was arraigned as Femme Maillard, of 
 Belle-ville. She was interrogated, and she answered in the purest 
 Erench. She was tried, and sentenced to twenty years' hard 
 labour in the usual way, and Lord Carnation, rubbing his eyes, 
 murmured that it was very odd, ver}" odd indeed, but that he must 
 have made a mistake. He had nci made a mistake. He had seen 
 Elorence Armytage ; but I have been told that a day or two after 
 the trial his lordship received an anonymous letter, in which he 
 was particularly advised to hold his tongue about what he had 
 seen at the Palais de Justice, and was moreover informed in the 
 politest of terms, that whatever he said would be sure to come to 
 the writer's ears, and that if ever he hazarded any indiscreet com- 
 ments tending to establish an identity between the Femme Mail- 
 lard and any other living creature, he, the writer, would be under
 
 458 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 the painful necessity of blowing out His lordship's brains on the 
 first convenient opportunity. The letter was signed, " One who 
 keeps his word," and Lord Carnation, whose moral courage was 
 not of the very highest calibre, took the advice volunteered to 
 him ia good part, and carefully refrained from any reference to 
 Mrs. Armytage in his future conversations. Only once, when 
 Lord Groomporter, whose notions of things were generally of the 
 most confused order, declared he had seen her at Baden Baden 
 with a E-ussian Prince to whom she was married, the Earl of Car- 
 nation said he had heard that she was on the Continent, but he 
 did not think she would be back for twenty years. 
 
 There wei'e persons in England, however, even more interested 
 in her exodus. The commercial and financial world — that is to 
 say, a vast number of shopkeepers and bill-discounters, both in 
 town and country — had been swindled and forged upon by her to 
 an almost inconceivable amount. They began to have a dim per- 
 ception that the fashionable Mrs. Armytage was also the notorious 
 Miss Armlet, was also the Countess Prigolski from Popoff" in 
 Poland, that she was the twin-sister of Lady Arabella Tothill 
 Eielding, if not that distinguished, though spurious and felonious, 
 member of the aristocracy herself. Then it was discovered that 
 she and Mrs. Hicks Hall were one and the same person: — in 
 fact, there was no end to Florence's aliases and Florence's felo- 
 nies. Saddington and Dedwards, Wittle and Gumtickler, innu- 
 merable hosiers, haberdashers, milliners, jewellers, and mantua- 
 makers, had been honoured by her custom, and had sufi'ered by 
 her. Ephraim Tigg, of Stockwell, was in a fury. She had robbed 
 him of thousands, he said ; he wanted to send Daniel Forrester to 
 the World's End after lier. He wanted to go before the grand 
 jury and prefer a bill against her. He would have her hanged, he 
 Avould have her burnt alive, he piped out. But a person named 
 Sims went discreetly about and threw oil upon the troubled 
 waters. Filoe and Co. of Coger's Inn took up a great many of 
 her bills. Five shillings in the pound satisfied many of her credi- 
 tors. More than one West End bill-discounter had good reasons 
 for not mentioning her name with harshness, nay, even for re- 
 membering her with a certain kind of gratitude for the good things 
 she had put in their way.
 
 THE AGONY OF FLORENCE AUMYTAGE. 459 
 
 " By Jove, sir ! " Mr. Domitian Doo, of Argyle Street, would 
 remark to his familiars, " that woman was the best tout in Lon- 
 don ! She would bring the Horse Guards down in a body, jack- 
 boots and all, to do a bit of stiff at three months. She would 
 gammon the wliole bar of England into taking half wine, and the 
 'ouse of Peers into taking one-third cash and the rest in ivory 
 frigates and camels' bits. If she had not bust up so sudden, she 
 would have brought the Bench of Bishops and the Board of Ad- 
 miralty down to my shop for a trifle in the way of accommo- 
 dation." 
 
 Was she chaste ? I declare that I do not know. 'No one ever 
 knew. There might liave been one pure spot on that blackened 
 heart, one unsullied moment in that wicked life. Liar, swindler, 
 forger, thief, she was known to be. Murderess, the French law- 
 yers and police spies declared she was ; but of Florence Armytage 
 as a chaste or unchaste woman none could speak with certainty. 
 Her Influence perhaps knew, but he was silent. 
 
 She was the yellow-haired woman Lord Carnation had seen in 
 Paris, but no Lord Groomporter had ever seen her in Baden 
 Baden. She was taken away, three days after her sentence, in 
 a cellular van, — a horrible dungeon upon wheels, which almost 
 jolted and rattled her to death, and within whose narrow confines 
 she passed three days and nights of agony, in darkness and stifling 
 heat, — to a great prison in the centre of Prance. She was to have 
 undergone twenty years' hard labour, but she never performed 
 one hour of that penance. The day after her arrival at her prison 
 house, she broke with her fist the glass window of her cell, — 
 it was secured by brass without, — powdered some pieces into 
 minute fragments, and actually swallowed a liandful of splintered 
 glass. That was to kill herself. Her throat was frightfully lace- 
 rated ; her hands and lips and tongue were almost cut to pieces ; 
 but she did not die. She had a long, long illness, but recovered. 
 She had a horrible fever, and her hair fell ofi", and she became ugly. 
 She knew that herself; for she clawed ofl"a pewter button from a 
 gaoler's coat, and polished it tiU she could see her face in the tiny 
 mirror, and so found that she was hideous. Her hair fell off, as 
 I have said ; but her vanity was not quite gone, for she was found 
 skimming the grease off her broth with a scrap of woollen rag, to
 
 4G0 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 use it as pomatum. "When she recovered, she tried to hang her- 
 self over and over again. She assayed to dash her head against 
 the wall of her cell ; she once bit a piece out of her right arm iu 
 the attempt to open a vein ; she had heard that Negro slaves, 
 under punishment, had contrived to vredge their tongues into the 
 oesophagus, and so suffocate themselves ; — but there was no use iu 
 it, and she could not die. She was reserved for expiation in this 
 world ; who dares predicate about the next ? She went through, 
 time after time, all the old tortures of dark dungeons, strait-waist- 
 coats, fetters, even watchers by day and by night, hunger, and pri- 
 vation. But they could not tame her. Priests tried to mollify her, 
 but in vain. She was placed, for many weeks, in a ward set apart 
 for lunatic prisoners. There was a talk about sending her to the 
 madhouse at Bicetre ; but she kept her senses, and was only in a 
 rage with herself and with the world. 
 
 At length, by Heaven's mercy, which is never denied but 
 only withheld for a season for Heaven's wise purpose, this most 
 miserable of His creatures fell ill. It was a decline. It proved 
 one of the very rapidest nature. " Elle deperissait a vue crceil," 
 the prison surgeons said. She wasted away day by day, and the 
 two livid spots which showed themselves on her cheeks when 
 from her bench she had seen the English nobleman at her trial 
 became permanent there. Her lips were all scarred with those 
 old marks made by the broken glass, dark-brown rings encircled 
 her eyes ; if they had put curtain-rings upon her now instead of 
 handcuffs, they would have slid off" her poor shrunken wrists ; her 
 bones asserted themselves sharply beneath her skin. She was a 
 terrible sight to see. 
 
 The summer sun shone very pleasantly into her prison-room 
 one June evening in 1852. Sol lucet omnibus. Ah, bah ! how 
 trite it is to repeat the saw ; but still the sun that shines for all 
 shone mercifully upon her now. She was dying, and knew it. 
 But upright by her bed sat a Sister of Charity ; not young and 
 well-favoured, like that Sister Marie des Douleurs you wot of, but 
 old and harsh-featured. Sister Marie-Catherine this was. She 
 was sixty ; but she had nursed her patient with angelic care and 
 tenderness. She had another watcher by her bed too — only her 
 man Sims. He had permission to be with her. Mr. Sims was a
 
 THK AGONY OF rLOllK.XCK AlOIYTAGK. 4G1 
 
 great traveller in his way, but a more prudent one than that lost 
 creature in the bed. He came and went as he listed ; and since 
 liis arrival she had been denied no care and no delicacy, and had 
 been removed from the prison infirmary to a cell by herself, 
 
 Sims was a man of the world and worldly, and is so still, and 
 thrives. Never mind as to whether he had a heart or not. Who 
 are we that we shall glibly declare our neighbour's bosom to be 
 empty, or filled only with flints ? How about our own vacuum ? 
 How about that paving-stone beneath our own fifth rib ? He 
 tended the dying woman with unceasing solicitude. He may 
 have had about as much religious conviction as Tom Paine ; but I 
 know that he brought her an English Bible. He gave it to her 
 just as though it had been an orange or a spoonful of jelly. " Per- 
 haps you'd like something in that way," he said quietly, and 
 walked to the window. 
 
 The Eomisb nun knew what he had done, but, although she 
 was of another faith, interposed no word of inhibition. Only, 
 when Florence turned her eyes towards her, as though in quest of 
 some permission, — for she was very meek and humble now, — the 
 Sister of Charity bowed her head in encouragement, and said, 
 " I^isez, majille. La mise?'icorde cle Dieio est infinie.^'' 
 
 And whenever Plorence Armytage turned inquiring eyes to- 
 wards Sister Marie-Catherine, the nun wearied not to tell her 
 that God's mercy was infinite. 
 
 She lay on her back many hours, day after day, and read the 
 book. She lay hours more, not reading ; her eyes closed, but not 
 asleep ; her lips softly moving. 
 
 " Tllle prie ! " murmured the nun, and took her rosary, and 
 began to pray too in her fashion. 
 
 She was so quietly lying on the evening when Mr. Sims came 
 to her for the last time. He sate by her motionless, revolving in 
 his mind who knows how many schemes, combinations, worldly 
 intrigues, and knaveries. But he never took his eyes ofi" hers. 
 
 She opened them, and murmured something inarticulately. 
 
 "Drink?" inquired Sims, his hand moving towards a jug of 
 cooling beverage. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Pan ? " he asked, pointing to a screen of paper.
 
 4G2 THE SEVEX SONS OF MAMIIOX. 
 
 " IS'o," she said witli an effort, aud suddenly sitting up in bed. 
 " Sims, let me see a clergyman." 
 
 " There is but the almoner of the gaol." 
 
 " It's no use ! Where's the use of confessing my sins to him. 
 I've no religion ; I'm neither Catholic nor Protestant." 
 
 The nun seemed to understand what she said, albeit, good 
 "woman, she spake not a word of English. She rose and took the 
 English Bible, and gave it to the dying woman, saying softly, 
 
 " Priez, mafille. Cela vousfera du hienr 
 
 " Tou are a good woman," said Florence to her ; " kiss me ! " 
 
 She held up her face and spoke in Erench ; and the nun bent 
 over her, and put her lips to her scarred mouth. 
 
 She was silent for half an hour, and then, as suddenly as 
 before, said, 
 
 " Sims, I am sorry. I should like to do some good. I should 
 like to save my father. Sims, he is as wicked as I am." 
 
 " He will do no more harm. He is dead." 
 
 " Dead ! " 
 
 "It was for the best. He might have died in a different 
 manner. He flew at very high game." 
 
 She gave a long shudder. 
 
 " How was it ? " she asked. 
 
 " As I predicted all along. He carried his little chemical ex- 
 periments too far. He died of apoplexy, at Mrs. Donkin's — of 
 apoplexy, you understand. But there were some little things 
 foimd in his laboratory that led me to a very different conclusion. 
 There was no fuss made about it. He died just after — so far as I 
 can judge — he had discovered the Grand Secret, — a poison which 
 has neither taste nor smell, and which leaves no vestige of its 
 presence in the human body ; but which, I am afraid, is rather 
 apt to kill those who inhale its vapour without putting a glass 
 mask over their faces." 
 
 She did not seem to hear him. It was certain that she was not 
 paying attention to him. She was evidently sinking, and near 
 her end. 
 
 All at once, and with a sharp spasmodic cry, she asked : 
 
 " Where is Hugh ? Is he dead too ? " ♦ 
 
 " Hugh the convict ? "
 
 THE AGONY OF FLORENCE ARMYTAGE. 463 
 
 "No; Hugli Goldthorpe. Hugh that was to have married 
 Magdaleu Hill. Hugh that I killed." 
 
 " Why, you know you have seen him half-a-dozen times within 
 these three days." 
 
 " I want to see him again. I want him to forgive me." 
 
 " Tou silly little creature, has he not told you over and over 
 again that he forgives you — that he bears you no malice for 
 having buried him alive in that convent in Belgium — in that 
 prison of Belleriport. He is Hugh Goldthorpe once more, no 
 longer a lay brother or a convicts' gaoler. He is going home to 
 England to his father and mother." 
 
 " Sims, I must see him again — for one moment, dear Sims. 
 There is something I have not yet asked him, and which he must 
 do: — be quick, Sims, I am dying." 
 
 Her old confederate motioned to the Sister of Charity to keep 
 a watchful eye on the moribund, and left the cell. He returned 
 anon, and brought with him the dead alive. " Eesurgam " had 
 been written on his coffin-plate, and he had risen from the tomb. 
 He was pale and worn, and the shadow of his former self; but he 
 was alive. 
 
 Sims beckoned to the Sister of Charity : she understood, and 
 followed him. He left Florence and Hugh together for twenty 
 minutes, when the young man, with a scared face, opened the door, 
 and bade them enter, for God's sake. 
 
 It was the crisis of her agony. She had risen up to die, and 
 was erect on the bed, but anon began to sway and totter. They 
 laid her down with gentle force, and bathed her forehead, and put 
 wine and jelly to her lips. 
 
 Once more she sat up in bed and spake. 
 
 "He has promised, he has promised," she gasped, the sobs of 
 death choking her utterance. "He has promised that he will 
 marry Magdalen. Forgive me, Hugh ; forgive me, Magdalen • 
 oh, God, forgive me ! " 
 
 These were the last words she uttered. It was now seven 
 o'clock ; but she lay till nearly nine quite still, and giving forth 
 only those quick, husky, regular respirations that betokened the 
 end. 
 
 The nun felt her feet, and they were cold ; her legs were dead.
 
 464 THE SEVEN SONS OF MAMMON. 
 
 The husky breathings grew more rapid — rapider — confused— and 
 stopped. A film Avas drawn over her eyes, and all at once her 
 flesh changed to marble, and she was dead. 
 
 Instinctively, it may be, Sims muttered that it was very hot and 
 close, and threw the cell-door open. The window w as open already. 
 And so her soul had elbow-room ; and the Soniething — we know 
 not what — came from between the parted lips of this worn sinner, 
 and passed into the Open ; going God knows whither, and to be 
 judged God alone knows how. Truly her sins were scarlet ; b'^t 
 there is snow that is white — and who can tell ? 
 
 The nun drew out a silver watch, and marked the hour. 
 
 " La viisericorde de Bieu est injinie,^' she murmured. " She 
 died at nine ; at ten they will come to put her in her shroud." 
 
 There is little more to be said. Mrs. Armytage made no 
 will ; but she had nevertheless an executor — a faithful one too — 
 whose name was Sims. On the day of his marriage with Mag- 
 dalen Hill, he put into the bridegroom's hands a pocket-book 
 containing bank-notes to the value of three thousand pounds. 
 
 "Don't scruple to take it," said Mr. Sims to the astonished 
 recipient ; " it is all your own. Tou see I know a thing or two ; 
 and riloe and Co. were enabled to rescue a trifle out of the fire 
 after our poor little friend's blow-up. A prodigious woman that, 
 sir. She might have gone anywhere, and done anything, like the 
 Peninsular war — was it not the Peninsular war ? — if it had not 
 been for her Impulse. Good-bye, my dear Hugh. Good-bye, 
 Mrs. H. I am Hugh's godfather, you know, and knew him when 
 he was a baby in long clothes. I'll take care that the old people 
 don't Avant for anything. Piloe and Co. are not broken yet. 
 Good-bye ; I am going to the play." 
 
 And thus dramatically intent, although it was barely one o'clock 
 in the day, Mr. Sims took his departure. 
 
 Were Hugh and Magdalen happy, I wonder ? I hope so. I 
 know they went to Van Diemen's Land, and that Hugh was very 
 successful as a sheep-farmer. 
 
 One word in conclusion. "When last I heard of him, Euthyn 
 Pendragon, all ex-curate of the Church of England as he was, had 
 not quite abandoned the clerical profession. He was still the
 
 THE AGONY OF FLORENCE AEJIYTAGE. 465 
 
 Eeverend Euthyn Pendragon ; be was the most popular and the 
 most prosperous preacher iu London. He had founded a new 
 sect, — that of the Peculiar Christians, indeed — of which he was a 
 shining light and Professor. His wit, his humour, his learning, 
 his eloquence, were admired by hundreds of thousands of weekly 
 worshippers. Bishops and prime ministers came incognito to hear 
 him. The chapel in which he held forth proved a world too small 
 for his enthusiastic admirers, and they built him a monstrous 
 tabernacle on the site of a horse-bazaar. But he was still, and 
 incorrigibly so, an exceedingly vulgar person. He has lately taken 
 to lecturing on Apes and Vermin, and his lectures are listened to 
 as eagerly and applauded as vehemently as his sermons. I should 
 not omit to state that he has taken to himself a wife, and that the 
 lady in question has a right to call herself, if she so chooses, the 
 Honourable Mrs. Pendragon. 
 
 " AVhere are you going ? " asked the tract at the Goldthorpe 
 Station. I think the deformed Slave was in the right when, 
 questioned as to his destination, he answered that he knew nothing 
 about it. Where are we all going, I wonder ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
 H H
 
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