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+Project Gutenberg Etext Catherine: A Story, by William Thackeray
+#9 in our series by William Makepeace Thackeray
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+Catherine: A Story
+
+by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+November, 1999  [Etext #1969]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext Catherine: A Story, by William Thackeray
+******This file should be named cthrn10.txt or cthrn10.zip******
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+This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
+
+
+
+
+
+Catherine: A Story
+
+by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+
+Catherine, A Story by Ikey Solomons, Esq., Junior.
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+Advertisement
+
+1.  Introducing to the reader the chief personages of this narrative.
+
+2.  In which are depicted the pleasures of a sentimental attachment.
+
+3.  In which a narcotic is administered, and a great deal of genteel
+society depicted.
+
+4.  In which Mrs. Catherine becomes an honest woman again.
+
+5.  Contains Mr. Brock's autobiography, and other matter.
+
+6.  The adventures of the ambassador, Mr. MacShane.
+
+7.  Which embraces a period of seven years.
+
+8.  Enumerates the accomplishments of Master Thomas Billings--
+introduces Brock as Doctor Wood--and announces the execution of
+Ensign MacShane.
+
+9.  Interview between Count Galgenstein and Master Thomas Billings,
+when he informs the Count of his parentage.
+
+10. Showing how Galgenstein and Mrs. Cat recognise each other in
+Marylebone Gardens--and how the Count drives her home in his carrige.
+
+11. Of some domestic quarrels, and the consequence thereof.
+
+12. Treats of love, and prepares for death.
+
+13. Being a preparation for the end.
+
+Chapter the Last.
+
+Another Last Chapter.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+
+
+The story of "Catherine," which appeared in Fraser's Magazine in
+1839-40, was written by Mr. Thackeray, under the name of Ikey
+Solomons, Jun., to counteract the injurious influence of some
+popular fictions of that day, which made heroes of highwaymen and
+burglars, and created a false sympathy for the vicious and criminal.
+
+With this purpose, the author chose for the subject of his story a
+woman named Catherine Hayes, who was burned at Tyburn, in 1726, for
+the deliberate murder of her husband, under very revolting
+circumstances.  Mr. Thackeray's aim obviously was to describe the
+career of this wretched woman and her associates with such fidelity
+to truth as to exhibit the danger and folly of investing such
+persons with heroic and romantic qualities.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.  Introducing to the reader the chief personages of this
+narrative.
+
+
+
+At that famous period of history, when the seventeenth century
+(after a deal of quarrelling, king-killing, reforming,
+republicanising, restoring, re-restoring, play-writing, sermon-
+writing, Oliver-Cromwellising, Stuartising, and Orangising, to be
+sure) had sunk into its grave, giving place to the lusty eighteenth;
+when Mr. Isaac Newton was a tutor of Trinity, and Mr. Joseph Addison
+Commissioner of Appeals; when the presiding genius that watched over
+the destinies of the French nation had played out all the best cards
+in his hand, and his adversaries began to pour in their trumps; when
+there were two kings in Spain employed perpetually in running away
+from one another; when there was a queen in England, with such
+rogues for Ministers as have never been seen, no, not in our own
+day; and a General, of whom it may be severely argued, whether he
+was the meanest miser or the greatest hero in the world; when Mrs.
+Masham had not yet put Madam Marlborough's nose out of joint; when
+people had their ears cut off for writing very meek political
+pamphlets; and very large full-bottomed wigs were just beginning to
+be worn with powder; and the face of Louis the Great, as his was
+handed in to him behind the bed-curtains, was, when issuing thence,
+observed to look longer, older, and more dismal daily. . . .
+
+About the year One thousand seven hundred and five, that is, in the
+glorious reign of Queen Anne, there existed certain characters, and
+befell a series of adventures, which, since they are strictly in
+accordance with the present fashionable style and taste; since they
+have been already partly described in the "Newgate Calendar;" since
+they are (as shall be seen anon) agreeably low, delightfully
+disgusting, and at the same time eminently pleasing and pathetic,
+may properly be set down here.
+
+And though it may be said, with some considerable show of reason,
+that agreeably low and delightfully disgusting characters have
+already been treated, both copiously and ably, by some eminent
+writers of the present (and, indeed, of future) ages; though to
+tread in the footsteps of the immortal FAGIN requires a genius of
+inordinate stride, and to go a-robbing after the late though
+deathless TURPIN, the renowned JACK SHEPPARD, or the embryo DUVAL,
+may be impossible, and not an infringement, but a wasteful
+indication of ill-will towards the eighth commandment; though it
+may, on the one hand, be asserted that only vain coxcombs would dare
+to write on subjects already described by men really and deservedly
+eminent; on the other hand, that these subjects have been described
+so fully, that nothing more can be said about them; on the third
+hand (allowing, for the sake of argument, three hands to one figure
+of speech), that the public has heard so much of them, as to be
+quite tired of rogues, thieves, cutthroats, and Newgate
+altogether;--though all these objections may be urged, and each is
+excellent, yet we intend to take a few more pages from the "Old
+Bailey Calendar," to bless the public with one more draught from the
+Stone Jug:*--yet awhile to listen, hurdle-mounted, and riding down
+the Oxford Road, to the bland conversation of Jack Ketch, and to
+hang with him round the neck of his patient, at the end of our and
+his history.  We give the reader fair notice, that we shall tickle
+him with a few such scenes of villainy, throat-cutting, and bodily
+suffering in general, as are not to be found, no, not in--; never
+mind comparisons, for such are odious.
+
+* This, as your Ladyship is aware, is the polite name for Her
+Majesty's Prison of Newgate.
+
+In the year 1705, then, whether it was that the Queen of England did
+feel seriously alarmed at the notion that a French prince should
+occupy the Spanish throne; or whether she was tenderly attached to
+the Emperor of Germany; or whether she was obliged to fight out the
+quarrel of William of Orange, who made us pay and fight for his
+Dutch provinces; or whether poor old Louis Quatorze did really
+frighten her; or whether Sarah Jennings and her husband wanted to
+make a fight, knowing how much they should gain by it;--whatever the
+reason was, it was evident that the war was to continue, and there
+was almost as much soldiering and recruiting, parading, pike and
+gun-exercising, flag-flying, drum-beating, powder-blazing, and
+military enthusiasm, as we can all remember in the year 1801, what
+time the Corsican upstart menaced our shores.  A recruiting-party
+and captain of Cutts's regiment (which had been so mangled at
+Blenheim the year before) were now in Warwickshire; and having their
+depot at Warwick, the captain and his attendant, the corporal, were
+used to travel through the country, seeking for heroes to fill up
+the gaps in Cutts's corps,--and for adventures to pass away the
+weary time of a country life.
+
+Our Captain Plume and Sergeant Kite (it was at this time, by the
+way, that those famous recruiting-officers were playing their pranks
+in Shrewsbury) were occupied very much in the same manner with
+Farquhar's heroes.  They roamed from Warwick to Stratford, and from
+Stratford to Birmingham, persuading the swains of Warwickshire to
+leave the plough for the Pike, and despatching, from time to time,
+small detachments of recruits to extend Marlborough's lines, and to
+act as food for the hungry cannon at Ramillies and Malplaquet.
+
+Of those two gentlemen who are about to act a very important part in
+our history, one only was probably a native of Britain,--we say
+probably, because the individual in question was himself quite
+uncertain, and, it must be added, entirely indifferent about his
+birthplace; but speaking the English language, and having been
+during the course of his life pretty generally engaged in the
+British service, he had a tolerably fair claim to the majestic title
+of Briton.  His name was Peter Brock, otherwise Corporal Brock, of
+Lord Cutts's regiment of dragoons; he was of age about fifty-seven
+(even that point has never been ascertained); in height about five
+feet six inches; in weight, nearly thirteen stone; with a chest that
+the celebrated Leitch himself might envy; an arm that was like an
+opera-dancer's leg; a stomach so elastic that it would accommodate
+itself to any given or stolen quantity of food; a great aptitude for
+strong liquors; a considerable skill in singing chansons de table of
+not the most delicate kind; he was a lover of jokes, of which he
+made many, and passably bad; when pleased, simply coarse,
+boisterous, and jovial; when angry, a perfect demon:  bullying,
+cursing, storming, fighting, as is sometimes the wont with gentlemen
+of his cloth and education.
+
+Mr. Brock was strictly, what the Marquis of Rodil styled himself in
+a proclamation to his soldiers after running away, a hijo de la
+guerra--a child of war.  Not seven cities, but one or two regiments,
+might contend for the honour of giving him birth; for his mother,
+whose name he took, had acted as camp-follower to a Royalist
+regiment; had then obeyed the Parliamentarians; died in Scotland
+when Monk was commanding in that country; and the first appearance
+of Mr. Brock in a public capacity displayed him as a fifer in the
+General's own regiment of Coldstreamers, when they marched from
+Scotland to London, and from a republic at once into a monarchy.
+Since that period, Brock had been always with the army, he had had,
+too, some promotion, for he spake of having a command at the battle
+of the Boyne; though probably (as he never mentioned the fact) upon
+the losing side.  The very year before this narrative commences, he
+had been one of Mordaunt's forlorn hope at Schellenberg, for which
+service he was promised a pair of colours; he lost them, however,
+and was almost shot (but fate did not ordain that his career should
+close in that way) for drunkenness and insubordination immediately
+after the battle; but having in some measure reinstated himself by a
+display of much gallantry at Blenheim, it was found advisable to
+send him to England for the purposes of recruiting, and remove him
+altogether from the regiment where his gallantry only rendered the
+example of his riot more dangerous.
+
+Mr. Brock's commander was a slim young gentleman of twenty-six,
+about whom there was likewise a history, if one would take the
+trouble to inquire.  He was a Bavarian by birth (his mother being an
+English lady), and enjoyed along with a dozen other brothers the
+title of count:  eleven of these, of course, were penniless; one or
+two were priests, one a monk, six or seven in various military
+services, and the elder at home at Schloss Galgenstein breeding
+horses, hunting wild boars, swindling tenants, living in a great
+house with small means; obliged to be sordid at home all the year,
+to be splendid for a month at the capital, as is the way with many
+other noblemen.  Our young count, Count Gustavus Adolphus Maximilian
+von Galgenstein, had been in the service of the French as page to a
+nobleman; then of His Majesty's gardes du corps; then a lieutenant
+and captain in the Bavarian service; and when, after the battle of
+Blenheim, two regiments of Germans came over to the winning side,
+Gustavus Adolphus Maximilian found himself among them; and at the
+epoch when this story commences, had enjoyed English pay for a year
+or more.  It is unnecessary to say how he exchanged into his present
+regiment; how it appeared that, before her marriage, handsome John
+Churchill had known the young gentleman's mother, when they were
+both penniless hangers-on at Charles the Second's court;--it is, we
+say, quite useless to repeat all the scandal of which we are
+perfectly masters, and to trace step by step the events of his
+history.  Here, however, was Gustavus Adolphus, in a small inn, in a
+small village of Warwickshire, on an autumn evening in the year
+1705; and at the very moment when this history begins, he and Mr.
+Brock, his corporal and friend, were seated at a round table before
+the kitchen-fire while a small groom of the establishment was
+leading up and down on the village green, before the inn door, two
+black, glossy, long-tailed, barrel-bellied, thick-flanked,
+arch-necked, Roman-nosed Flanders horses, which were the property of
+the two gentlemen now taking their ease at the "Bugle Inn."  The two
+gentlemen were seated at their ease at the inn table, drinking
+mountain-wine; and if the reader fancies from the sketch which we
+have given of their lives, or from his own blindness and belief in
+the perfectibility of human nature, that the sun of that autumn
+evening shone upon any two men in county or city, at desk or
+harvest, at Court or at Newgate, drunk or sober, who were greater
+rascals than Count Gustavus Galgenstein and Corporal Peter Brock, he
+is egregiously mistaken, and his knowledge of human nature is not
+worth a fig.  If they had not been two prominent scoundrels, what
+earthly business should we have in detailing their histories?  What
+would the public care for them?  Who would meddle with dull virtue,
+humdrum sentiment, or stupid innocence, when vice, agreeable vice,
+is the only thing which the readers of romances care to hear?
+
+The little horse-boy, who was leading the two black Flanders horses
+up and down the green, might have put them in the stable for any
+good that the horses got by the gentle exercise which they were now
+taking in the cool evening air, as their owners had not ridden very
+far or very hard, and there was not a hair turned of their sleek
+shining coats; but the lad had been especially ordered so to walk
+the horses about until he received further commands from the
+gentlemen reposing in the "Bugle" kitchen; and the idlers of the
+village seemed so pleased with the beasts, and their smart saddles
+and shining bridles, that it would have been a pity to deprive them
+of the pleasure of contemplating such an innocent spectacle.  Over
+the Count's horse was thrown a fine red cloth, richly embroidered in
+yellow worsted, a very large count's coronet and a cipher at the
+four corners of the covering; and under this might be seen a pair of
+gorgeous silver stirrups, and above it, a couple of silver-mounted
+pistols reposing in bearskin holsters; the bit was silver too, and
+the horse's head was decorated with many smart ribbons.  Of the
+Corporal's steed, suffice it to say, that the ornaments were in
+brass, as bright, though not perhaps so valuable, as those which
+decorated the Captain's animal.  The boys, who had been at play on
+the green, first paused and entered into conversation with the
+horse-boy; then the village matrons followed; and afterwards,
+sauntering by ones and twos, came the village maidens, who love
+soldiers as flies love treacle; presently the males began to arrive,
+and lo! the parson of the parish, taking his evening walk with Mrs.
+Dobbs, and the four children his offspring, at length joined himself
+to his flock.
+
+To this audience the little ostler explained that the animals
+belonged to two gentlemen now reposing at the "Bugle:" one young
+with gold hair, the other old with grizzled locks; both in red
+coats; both in jack-boots; putting the house into a bustle, and
+calling for the best.  He then discoursed to some of his own
+companions regarding the merits of the horses; and the parson, a
+learned man, explained to the villagers, that one of the travellers
+must be a count, or at least had a count's horsecloth; pronounced
+that the stirrups were of real silver, and checked the impetuosity
+of his son, William Nassau Dobbs, who was for mounting the animals,
+and who expressed a longing to fire off one of the pistols in the
+holsters.
+
+As this family discussion was taking place, the gentlemen whose
+appearance had created so much attention came to the door of the
+inn, and the elder and stouter was seen to smile at his companion;
+after which he strolled leisurely over the green, and seemed to
+examine with much benevolent satisfaction the assemblage of
+villagers who were staring at him and the quadrupeds.
+
+Mr. Brock, when he saw the parson's band and cassock, took off his
+beaver reverently, and saluted the divine:  "I hope your reverence
+won't baulk the little fellow," said he; "I think I heard him
+calling out for a ride, and whether he should like my horse, or his
+Lordship's horse, I am sure it is all one.  Don't be afraid, sir!
+the horses are not tired; we have only come seventy mile to-day, and
+Prince Eugene once rode a matter of fifty-two leagues (a hundred and
+fifty miles), sir, upon that horse, between sunrise and sunset."
+
+"Gracious powers! on which horse?" said Doctor Dobbs, very solemnly.
+
+"On THIS, sir,--on mine, Corporal Brock of Cutts's black gelding,
+'William of Nassau.' The Prince, sir, gave it me after Blenheim
+fight, for I had my own legs carried away by a cannon-ball, just as
+I cut down two of Sauerkrauter's regiment, who had made the Prince
+prisoner."
+
+"Your own legs, sir!" said the Doctor.  "Gracious goodness! this is
+more and more astonishing!"
+
+"No, no, not my own legs, my horse's I mean, sir; and the Prince
+gave me 'William of Nassau' that very day."
+
+To this no direct reply was made; but the Doctor looked at Mrs.
+Dobbs, and Mrs. Dobbs and the rest of the children at her eldest
+son, who grinned and said, "Isn't it wonderful?"  The Corporal to
+this answered nothing, but, resuming his account, pointed to the
+other horse and said, "THAT horse, sir--good as mine is--that horse,
+with the silver stirrups, is his Excellency's horse, Captain Count
+Maximilian Gustavus Adolphus von Galgenstein, captain of horse and
+of the Holy Roman Empire" (he lifted here his hat with much gravity,
+and all the crowd, even to the parson, did likewise).  "We call him
+'George of Denmark,' sir, in compliment to Her Majesty's husband:
+he is Blenheim too, sir; Marshal Tallard rode him on that day, and
+you know how HE was taken prisoner by the Count."
+
+"George of Denmark, Marshal Tallard, William of Nassau! this is
+strange indeed, most wonderful!  Why, sir, little are you aware that
+there are before you, AT THIS MOMENT, two other living beings who
+bear these venerated names!  My boys, stand forward!  Look here,
+sir:  these children have been respectively named after our late
+sovereign and the husband of our present Queen."
+
+"And very good names too, sir; ay, and very noble little fellows
+too; and I propose that, with your reverence and your ladyship's
+leave, William Nassau here shall ride on George of Denmark, and
+George of Denmark shall ride on William of Nassau."
+
+When this speech of the Corporal's was made, the whole crowd set up
+a loyal hurrah; and, with much gravity, the two little boys were
+lifted up into the saddles; and the Corporal leading one, entrusted
+the other to the horse-boy, and so together marched stately up and
+down the green.
+
+The popularity which Mr. Brock gained by this manoeuvre was very
+great; but with regard to the names of the horses and children,
+which coincided so extraordinarily, it is but fair to state, that
+the christening of the quadrupeds had only taken place about two
+minutes before the dragoon's appearance on the green.  For if the
+fact must be confessed, he, while seated near the inn window, had
+kept a pretty wistful eye upon all going on without; and the horses
+marching thus to and fro for the wonderment of the village, were
+only placards or advertisements for the riders.
+
+There was, besides the boy now occupied with the horses, and the
+landlord and landlady of the "Bugle Inn," another person connected
+with that establishment--a very smart, handsome, vain, giggling
+servant-girl, about the age of sixteen, who went by the familiar
+name of Cat, and attended upon the gentlemen in the parlour, while
+the landlady was employed in cooking their supper in the kitchen.
+This young person had been educated in the village poor-house, and
+having been pronounced by Doctor Dobbs and the schoolmaster the
+idlest, dirtiest, and most passionate little minx with whom either
+had ever had to do, she was, after receiving a very small portion of
+literary instruction (indeed it must be stated that the young lady
+did not know her letters), bound apprentice at the age of nine years
+to Mrs. Score, her relative, and landlady of the "Bugle Inn."
+
+If Miss Cat, or Catherine Hall, was a slattern and a minx, Mrs.
+Score was a far superior shrew; and for the seven years of her
+apprenticeship the girl was completely at her mistress's mercy.  Yet
+though wondrously stingy, jealous, and violent, while her maid was
+idle and extravagant, and her husband seemed to abet the girl, Mrs.
+Score put up with the wench's airs, idleness, and caprices, without
+ever wishing to dismiss her from the "Bugle."  The fact is, that
+Miss Catherine was a great beauty, and for about two years, since
+her fame had begun to spread, the custom of the inn had also
+increased vastly.  When there was a debate whether the farmers, on
+their way from market, would take t'other pot, Catherine, by
+appearing with it, would straightway cause the liquor to be
+swallowed and paid for; and when the traveller who proposed riding
+that night and sleeping at Coventry or Birmingham, was asked by Miss
+Catherine whether he would like a fire in his bedroom, he generally
+was induced to occupy it, although he might before have vowed to
+Mrs. Score that he would not for a thousand guineas be absent from
+home that night.  The girl had, too, half-a-dozen lovers in the
+village; and these were bound in honour to spend their pence at the
+alehouse she inhabited.  O woman, lovely woman! what strong resolves
+canst thou twist round thy little finger! what gunpowder passions
+canst thou kindle with a single sparkle of thine eye! what lies and
+fribble nonsense canst thou make us listen to, as they were gospel
+truth or splendid wit! above all what bad liquor canst thou make us
+swallow when thou puttest a kiss within the cup--and we are content
+to call the poison wine!
+
+The mountain-wine at the "Bugle" was, in fact, execrable; but Mrs.
+Cat, who served it to the two soldiers, made it so agreeable to
+them, that they found it a passable, even a pleasant task, to
+swallow the contents of a second bottle.  The miracle had been
+wrought instantaneously on her appearance:  for whereas at that very
+moment the Count was employed in cursing the wine, the landlady, the
+wine-grower, and the English nation generally, when the young woman
+entered and (choosing so to interpret the oaths) said, "Coming, your
+honour; I think your honour called"--Gustavus Adolphus whistled,
+stared at her very hard, and seeming quite dumb-stricken by her
+appearance, contented himself by swallowing a whole glass of
+mountain by way of reply.
+
+Mr. Brock was, however, by no means so confounded as his captain:
+he was thirty years older than the latter, and in the course of
+fifty years of military life had learned to look on the most
+dangerous enemy, or the most beautiful woman, with the like daring,
+devil-may-care determination to conquer.
+
+"My dear Mary," then said that gentleman, "his honour is a lord; as
+good as a lord, that is; for all he allows such humble fellows as I
+am to drink with him."
+
+Catherine dropped a low curtsey, and said, "Well, I don't know if
+you are joking a poor country girl, as all you soldier gentlemen do;
+but his honour LOOKS like a lord:  though I never see one, to be
+sure."
+
+"Then," said the Captain, gathering courage, "how do you know I look
+like one, pretty Mary?"
+
+"Pretty Catherine:  I mean Catherine, if you please, sir."
+
+Here Mr. Brock burst into a roar of laughter, and shouting with many
+oaths that she was right at first, invited her to give him what he
+called a buss.
+
+Pretty Catherine turned away from him at this request, and muttered
+something about "Keep your distance, low fellow! buss indeed; poor
+country girl," etc. etc., placing herself, as if for protection, on
+the side of the Captain.  That gentleman looked also very angry; but
+whether at the sight of innocence so outraged, or the insolence of
+the Corporal for daring to help himself first, we cannot say.  "Hark
+ye, Mr. Brock," he cried very fiercely, "I will suffer no such
+liberties in my presence:  remember, it is only my condescension
+which permits you to share my bottle in this way; take care I don't
+give you instead a taste of my cane."  So saying, he, in a
+protecting manner, placed one hand round Mrs. Catherine's waist,
+holding the other clenched very near to the Corporal's nose.
+
+Mrs.  Catherine, for HER share of this action of the Count's,
+dropped another curtsey and said, "Thank you, my Lord."  But
+Galgenstein's threat did not appear to make any impression on Mr.
+Brock, as indeed there was no reason that it should; for the
+Corporal, at a combat of fisticuffs, could have pounded his
+commander into a jelly in ten minutes; so he contented himself by
+saying, "Well, noble Captain, there's no harm done; it IS an honour
+for poor old Peter Brock to be at table with you, and I AM sorry,
+sure enough."
+
+"In truth, Peter, I believe thou art; thou hast good reason, eh,
+Peter?  But never fear, man; had I struck thee, I never would have
+hurt thee."
+
+"I KNOW you would not," replied Brock, laying his hand on his heart
+with much gravity; and so peace was made, and healths were drunk.
+Miss Catherine condescended to put her lips to the Captain's glass;
+who swore that the wine was thus converted into nectar; and although
+the girl had not previously heard of that liquor, she received the
+compliment as a compliment, and smiled and simpered in return.
+
+The poor thing had never before seen anybody so handsome, or so
+finely dressed as the Count; and, in the simplicity of her coquetry,
+allowed her satisfaction to be quite visible.  Nothing could be more
+clumsy than the gentleman's mode of complimenting her; but for this,
+perhaps, his speeches were more effective than others more delicate
+would have been; and though she said to each, "Oh, now, my Lord,"
+and "La, Captain, how can you flatter one so?" and "Your honour's
+laughing at me," and made such polite speeches as are used on these
+occasions, it was manifest from the flutter and blush, and the grin
+of satisfaction which lighted up the buxom features of the little
+country beauty, that the Count's first operations had been highly
+successful.  When following up his attack, he produced from his neck
+a small locket (which had been given him by a Dutch lady at the
+Brill), and begged Miss Catherine to wear it for his sake, and
+chucked her under the chin and called her his little rosebud, it was
+pretty clear how things would go:  anybody who could see the
+expression of Mr. Brock's countenance at this event might judge of
+the progress of the irresistible High-Dutch conqueror.
+
+Being of a very vain communicative turn, our fair barmaid gave her
+two companions, not only a pretty long account of herself, but of
+many other persons in the village, whom she could perceive from the
+window opposite to which she stood.  "Yes, your honour," said she--
+"my Lord, I mean; sixteen last March, though there's a many girl in
+the village that at my age is quite chits.  There's Polly Randall
+now, that red-haired girl along with Thomas Curtis:  she's seventeen
+if she's a day, though he is the very first sweetheart she has had.
+Well, as I am saying, I was bred up here in the village--father and
+mother died very young, and I was left a poor orphan--well, bless
+us! if Thomas haven't kissed her!--to the care of Mrs. Score, my
+aunt, who has been a mother to me--a stepmother, you know;--and I've
+been to Stratford fair, and to Warwick many a time; and there's two
+people who have offered to marry me, and ever so many who want to,
+and I won't have none--only a gentleman, as I've always said; not a
+poor clodpole, like Tom there with the red waistcoat (he was one
+that asked me), nor a drunken fellow like Sam Blacksmith yonder, him
+whose wife has got the black eye, but a real gentleman, like--"
+
+"Like whom, my dear?" said the Captain, encouraged.
+
+"La, sir, how can you?  Why, like our squire, Sir John, who rides in
+such a mortal fine gold coach; or, at least, like the parson, Doctor
+Dobbs--that's he, in the black gown, walking with Madam Dobbs in
+red."
+
+"And are those his children?"
+
+"Yes:  two girls and two boys; and only think, he calls one William
+Nassau, and one George Denmark--isn't it odd?"  And from the parson,
+Mrs. Catherine went on to speak of several humble personages of the
+village community, who, as they are not necessary to our story, need
+not be described at full length.  It was when, from the window,
+Corporal Brock saw the altercation between the worthy divine and his
+son, respecting the latter's ride, that he judged it a fitting time
+to step out on the green, and to bestow on the two horses those
+famous historical names which we have just heard applied to them.
+
+Mr. Brock's diplomacy was, as we have stated, quite successful; for,
+when the parson's boys had ridden and retired along with their mamma
+and papa, other young gentlemen of humbler rank in the village were
+placed upon "George of Denmark" and "William of Nassau;" the
+Corporal joking and laughing with all the grown-up people.  The
+women, in spite of Mr. Brock's age, his red nose, and a certain
+squint of his eye, vowed the Corporal was a jewel of a man; and
+among the men his popularity was equally great.
+
+"How much dost thee get, Thomas Clodpole?" said Mr. Brock to a
+countryman (he was the man whom Mrs. Catherine had described as her
+suitor), who had laughed loudest at some of his jokes:  "how much
+dost thee get for a week's work, now?"
+
+Mr. Clodpole, whose name was really Bullock, stated that his wages
+amounted to "three shillings and a puddn."
+
+"Three shillings and a puddn!--monstrous!--and for this you toil
+like a galley-slave, as I have seen them in Turkey and America,--ay,
+gentlemen, and in the country of Prester John!  You shiver out of
+bed on icy winter mornings, to break the ice for Ball and Dapple to
+drink."
+
+"Yes, indeed," said the person addressed, who seemed astounded at
+the extent of the Corporal's information.
+
+"Or you clean pigsty, and take dung down to meadow; or you act
+watchdog and tend sheep; or you sweep a scythe over a great field of
+grass; and when the sun has scorched the eyes out of your head, and
+sweated the flesh off your bones, and well-nigh fried the soul out
+of your body, you go home, to what?--three shillings a week and a
+puddn!  Do you get pudding every day?"
+
+"No; only Sundays."
+
+"Do you get money enough?"
+
+"No, sure."
+
+"Do you get beer enough?"
+
+"Oh no, NEVER!" said Mr. Bullock quite resolutely.
+
+"Worthy Clodpole, give us thy hand:  it shall have beer enough this
+day, or my name's not Corporal Brock.  Here's the money, boy! there
+are twenty pieces in this purse:  and how do you think I got 'em?
+and how do you think I shall get others when these are gone?--by
+serving Her Sacred Majesty, to be sure:  long life to her, and down
+with the French King!"
+
+Bullock, a few of the men, and two or three of the boys, piped out
+an hurrah, in compliment to this speech of the Corporal's:  but it
+was remarked that the greater part of the crowd drew back--the women
+whispering ominously to them and looking at the Corporal.
+
+"I see, ladies, what it is," said he.  "You are frightened, and
+think I am a crimp come to steal your sweethearts away.  What! call
+Peter Brock a double-dealer?  I tell you what, boys, Jack Churchill
+himself has shaken this hand, and drunk a pot with me:  do you think
+he'd shake hands with a rogue?  Here's Tummas Clodpole has never had
+beer enough, and here am I will stand treat to him and any other
+gentleman:  am I good enough company for him?  I have money, look
+you, and like to spend it:  what should _I_ be doing dirty actions
+for--hay, Tummas?"
+
+A satisfactory reply to this query was not, of course, expected by
+the Corporal nor uttered by Mr. Bullock; and the end of the dispute
+was, that he and three or four of the rustic bystanders were quite
+convinced of the good intentions of their new friend, and
+accompanied him back to the "Bugle," to regale upon the promised
+beer.  Among the Corporal's guests was one young fellow whose dress
+would show that he was somewhat better to do in the world than
+Clodpole and the rest of the sunburnt ragged troop, who were
+marching towards the alehouse.  This man was the only one of his
+hearers who, perhaps, was sceptical as to the truth of his stories;
+but as soon as Bullock accepted the invitation to drink, John Hayes,
+the carpenter (for such was his name and profession), said, "Well,
+Thomas, if thou goest, I will go too."
+
+"I know thee wilt," said Thomas:  "thou'lt goo anywhere Catty Hall
+is, provided thou canst goo for nothing."
+
+"Nay, I have a penny to spend as good as the Corporal here."
+
+"A penny to KEEP, you mean:  for all your love for the lass at the
+'Bugle,' did thee ever spend a shilling in the house?  Thee wouldn't
+go now, but that I am going too, and the Captain here stands treat."
+
+"Come, come, gentlemen, no quarrelling," said Mr. Brock.  "If this
+pretty fellow will join us, amen say I:  there's lots of liquor, and
+plenty of money to pay the score.  Comrade Tummas, give us thy arm.
+Mr. Hayes, you're a hearty cock, I make no doubt, and all such are
+welcome.  Come along, my gentleman farmers, Mr. Brock shall have the
+honour to pay for you all."  And with this, Corporal Brock,
+accompanied by Messrs. Hayes, Bullock, Blacksmith, Baker's-boy,
+Butcher, and one or two others, adjourned to the inn; the horses
+being, at the same time, conducted to the stable.
+
+Although we have, in this quiet way, and without any flourishing of
+trumpets, or beginning of chapters, introduced Mr. Hayes to the
+public; and although, at first sight, a sneaking carpenter's boy may
+seem hardly worthy of the notice of an intelligent reader, who looks
+for a good cut-throat or highwayman for a hero, or a pickpocket at
+the very least:  this gentleman's words and actions should be
+carefully studied by the public, as he is destined to appear before
+them under very polite and curious circumstances during the course
+of this history.  The speech of the rustic Juvenal, Mr. Clodpole,
+had seemed to infer that Hayes was at once careful of his money and
+a warm admirer of Mrs. Catherine of the "Bugle:"  and both the
+charges were perfectly true.  Hayes's father was reported to be a
+man of some substance; and young John, who was performing his
+apprenticeship in the village, did not fail to talk very big of his
+pretensions to fortune--of his entering, at the close of his
+indentures, into partnership with his father--and of the comfortable
+farm and house over which Mrs. John Hayes, whoever she might be,
+would one day preside.  Thus, next to the barber and butcher, and
+above even his own master, Mr. Hayes took rank in the village:  and
+it must not be concealed that his representation of wealth had made
+some impression upon Mrs. Hall toward whom the young gentleman had
+cast the eyes of affection.  If he had been tolerably well-looking,
+and not pale, rickety, and feeble as he was; if even he had been
+ugly, but withal a man of spirit, it is probable the girl's kindness
+for him would have been much more decided.  But he was a poor weak
+creature, not to compare with honest Thomas Bullock, by at least
+nine inches; and so notoriously timid, selfish, and stingy, that
+there was a kind of shame in receiving his addresses openly; and
+what encouragement Mrs. Catherine gave him could only be in secret.
+
+But no mortal is wise at all times:  and the fact was, that Hayes,
+who cared for himself intensely, had set his heart upon winning
+Catherine; and loved her with a desperate greedy eagerness and
+desire of possession, which makes passions for women often so fierce
+and unreasonable among very cold and selfish men.  His parents
+(whose frugality he had inherited) had tried in vain to wean him
+from this passion, and had made many fruitless attempts to engage
+him with women who possessed money and desired husbands; but Hayes
+was, for a wonder, quite proof against their attractions; and,
+though quite ready to acknowledge the absurdity of his love for a
+penniless alehouse servant-girl, nevertheless persisted in it
+doggedly.  "I know I'm a fool," said he; "and what's more, the girl
+does not care for me; but marry her I must, or I think I shall just
+die:  and marry her I will."  For very much to the credit of Miss
+Catherine's modesty, she had declared that marriage was with her a
+sine qua non, and had dismissed, with the loudest scorn and
+indignation, all propositions of a less proper nature.
+
+Poor Thomas Bullock was another of her admirers, and had offered to
+marry her; but three shillings a week and a puddn was not to the
+girl's taste, and Thomas had been scornfully rejected.  Hayes had
+also made her a direct proposal.  Catherine did not say no:  she was
+too prudent:  but she was young and could wait; she did not care for
+Mr. Hayes yet enough to marry him--(it did not seem, indeed, in the
+young woman's nature to care for anybody)--and she gave her adorer
+flatteringly to understand that, if nobody better appeared in the
+course of a few years, she might be induced to become Mrs. Hayes.
+It was a dismal prospect for the poor fellow to live upon the hope
+of being one day Mrs. Catherine's pis-aller.
+
+In the meantime she considered herself free as the wind, and
+permitted herself all the innocent gaieties which that "chartered
+libertine," a coquette, can take.  She flirted with all the
+bachelors, widowers, and married men, in a manner which did
+extraordinary credit to her years:  and let not the reader fancy
+such pastimes unnatural at her early age.  The ladies--Heaven bless
+them!--are, as a general rule, coquettes from babyhood upwards.
+Little SHE'S of three years old play little airs and graces upon
+small heroes of five; simpering misses of nine make attacks upon
+young gentlemen of twelve; and at sixteen, a well-grown girl, under
+encouraging circumstances--say, she is pretty, in a family of ugly
+elder sisters, or an only child and heiress, or a humble wench at a
+country inn, like our fair Catherine--is at the very pink and prime
+of her coquetry:  they will jilt you at that age with an ease and
+arch infantine simplicity that never can be surpassed in maturer
+years.
+
+Miss Catherine, then, was a franche coquette, and Mr. John Hayes was
+miserable.  His life was passed in a storm of mean passions and
+bitter jealousies, and desperate attacks upon the indifference-rock
+of Mrs. Catherine's heart, which not all his tempest of love could
+beat down.  O cruel cruel pangs of love unrequited!  Mean rogues
+feel them as well as great heroes.  Lives there the man in Europe
+who has not felt them many times?--who has not knelt, and fawned,
+and supplicated, and wept, and cursed, and raved, all in vain; and
+passed long wakeful nights with ghosts of dead hopes for company;
+shadows of buried remembrances that glide out of their graves of
+nights, and whisper, "We are dead now, but we WERE once; and we made
+you happy, and we come now to mock you:--despair, O lover, despair,
+and die"?--O cruel pangs!--dismal nights!--Now a sly demon creeps
+under your nightcap, and drops into your ear those soft
+hope-breathing sweet words, uttered on the well-remembered evening:
+there, in the drawer of your dressing-table (along with the razors,
+and Macassar oil), lies the dead flower that Lady Amelia Wilhelmina
+wore in her bosom on the night of a certain ball--the corpse of a
+glorious hope that seemed once as if it would live for ever, so
+strong was it, so full of joy and sunshine:  there, in your
+writing-desk, among a crowd of unpaid bills, is the dirty scrap of
+paper, thimble-sealed, which came in company with a pair of
+muffetees of her knitting (she was a butcher's daughter, and did all
+she could, poor thing!), begging "you would ware them at collidge,
+and think of her who"--married a public-house three weeks
+afterwards, and cares for you no more now than she does for the
+pot-boy.  But why multiply instances, or seek to depict the agony of
+poor mean-spirited John Hayes?  No mistake can be greater than that
+of fancying such great emotions of love are only felt by virtuous or
+exalted men:  depend upon it, Love, like Death, plays havoc among
+the pauperum tabernas, and sports with rich and poor, wicked and
+virtuous, alike.  I have often fancied, for instance, on seeing the
+haggard pale young old-clothesman, who wakes the echoes of our
+street with his nasal cry of "Clo'!"--I have often, I said, fancied
+that, besides the load of exuvial coats and breeches under which he
+staggers, there is another weight on him--an atrior cura at his
+tail--and while his unshorn lips and nose together are performing
+that mocking, boisterous, Jack-indifferent cry of "Clo', clo'!" who
+knows what woeful utterances are crying from the heart within?
+There he is, chaffering with the footman at No. 7 about an old
+dressing-gown:  you think his whole soul is bent only on the contest
+about the garment.  Psha! there is, perhaps, some faithless girl in
+Holywell Street who fills up his heart; and that desultory Jew-boy
+is a peripatetic hell!  Take another instance:--take the man in the
+beef-shop in Saint Martin's Court.  There he is, to all appearances
+quite calm:  before the same round of beef--from morning till
+sundown--for hundreds of years very likely.  Perhaps when the
+shutters are closed, and all the world tired and silent, there is HE
+silent, but untired--cutting, cutting, cutting.  You enter, you get
+your meat to your liking, you depart; and, quite unmoved, on, on he
+goes, reaping ceaselessly the Great Harvest of Beef.  You would
+fancy that if Passion ever failed to conquer, it had in vain
+assailed the calm bosom of THAT MAN.  I doubt it, and would give
+much to know his history.
+
+Who knows what furious Aetna-flames are raging underneath the
+surface of that calm flesh-mountain--who can tell me that that
+calmness itself is not DESPAIR?
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+The reader, if he does not now understand why it was that Mr. Hayes
+agreed to drink the Corporal's proffered beer, had better just read
+the foregoing remarks over again, and if he does not understand
+THEN, why, small praise to his brains.  Hayes could not bear that
+Mr. Bullock should have a chance of seeing, and perhaps making love
+to Mrs. Catherine in his absence; and though the young woman never
+diminished her coquetries, but, on the contrary, rather increased
+them in his presence, it was still a kind of dismal satisfaction to
+be miserable in her company.
+
+On this occasion, the disconsolate lover could be wretched to his
+heart's content; for Catherine had not a word or a look for him, but
+bestowed all her smiles upon the handsome stranger who owned the
+black horse.  As for poor Tummas Bullock, his passion was never
+violent; and he was content in the present instance to sigh and
+drink beer.  He sighed and drank, sighed and drank, and drank again,
+until he had swallowed so much of the Corporal's liquor, as to be
+induced to accept a guinea from his purse also; and found himself,
+on returning to reason and sobriety, a soldier of Queen Anne's.
+
+But oh! fancy the agonies of Mr. Hayes when, seated with the
+Corporal's friends at one end of the kitchen, he saw the Captain at
+the place of honour, and the smiles which the fair maid bestowed
+upon him; when, as she lightly whisked past him with the Captain's
+supper, she, pointing to the locket that once reposed on the breast
+of the Dutch lady at the Brill, looked archly on Hayes and said,
+"See, John, what his Lordship has given me;" and when John's face
+became green and purple with rage and jealousy, Mrs. Catherine
+laughed ten times louder, and cried "Coming, my Lord," in a voice of
+shrill triumph, that bored through the soul of Mr. John Hayes and
+left him gasping for breath.
+
+On Catherine's other lover, Mr. Thomas, this coquetry had no effect:
+he, and two comrades of his, had by this time quite fallen under the
+spell of the Corporal; and hope, glory, strong beer, Prince Eugene,
+pair of colours, more strong beer, her blessed Majesty, plenty more
+strong beer, and such subjects, martial and bacchic, whirled through
+their dizzy brains at a railroad pace.
+
+And now, if there had been a couple of experienced reporters present
+at the "Bugle Inn," they might have taken down a conversation on
+love and war--the two themes discussed by the two parties occupying
+the kitchen--which, as the parts were sung together, duetwise,
+formed together some very curious harmonies.  Thus, while the
+Captain was whispering the softest nothings, the Corporal was
+shouting the fiercest combats of the war; and, like the gentleman at
+Penelope's table, on it exiguo pinxit praelia tota bero.  For
+example:
+
+CAPTAIN.  What do you say to a silver trimming, pretty Catherine?
+Don't you think a scarlet riding-cloak, handsomely laced, would
+become you wonderfully well?--and a grey hat with a blue feather--
+and a pretty nag to ride on--and all the soldiers to present arms as
+you pass, and say, "There goes the Captain's lady"?  What do you
+think of a side-box at Lincoln's Inn playhouse, or of standing up to
+a minuet with my Lord Marquis at--?
+
+CORPORAL.  The ball, sir, ran right up his elbow, and was found the
+next day by Surgeon Splinter of ours,--where do you think, sir?--
+upon my honour as a gentleman it came out of the nape of his--
+
+CAPTAIN.  Necklace--and a sweet pair of diamond earrings,
+mayhap--and a little shower of patches, which ornament a lady's face
+wondrously--and a leetle rouge--though, egad! such peach-cheeks as
+yours don't want it;--fie! Mrs. Catherine, I should think the birds
+must come and peck at them as if they were fruit--
+
+CORPORAL.  Over the wall; and three-and-twenty of our fellows jumped
+after me.  By the Pope of Rome, friend Tummas, that was a day!--Had
+you seen how the Mounseers looked when four-and-twenty rampaging
+he-devils, sword and pistol, cut and thrust, pell-mell came tumbling
+into the redoubt!  Why, sir, we left in three minutes as many
+artillerymen's heads as there were cannon-balls.  It was, "Ah
+sacre!"  "D----- you, take that!"  "O mon Dieu!"  "Run him through!"
+"Ventrebleu!" and it WAS ventrebleu with him, I warrant you; for
+bleu, in the French language, means "through;" and ventre--why, you
+see, ventre means--
+
+CAPTAIN.  Waists, which are worn now excessive long; and for the
+hoops, if you COULD but see them--stap my vitals, my dear, but there
+was a lady at Warwick's Assembly (she came in one of my Lord's
+coaches) who had a hoop as big as a tent:  you might have dined
+under it comfortably;--ha! ha! 'pon my faith, now--
+
+CORPORAL.  And there we found the Duke of Marlborough seated along
+with Marshal Tallard, who was endeavouring to drown his sorrow over
+a cup of Johannisberger wine; and a good drink too, my lads, only
+not to compare to Warwick beer.  "Who was the man who has done
+this?" said our noble General.  I stepped up.  "How many heads was
+it," says he, "that you cut off?"  "Nineteen," says I, "besides
+wounding several." When he heard it (Mr. Hayes, you don't drink) I'm
+blest if he didn't burst into tears!  "Noble noble fellow," says he.
+"Marshal, you must excuse me if I am pleased to hear of the
+destruction of your countrymen.  Noble noble fellow!--here's a
+hundred guineas for you."  Which sum he placed in my hand.  "Nay,"
+says the Marshal "the man has done his duty:" and, pulling out a
+magnificent gold diamond-hilted snuff-box, he gave me--
+
+MR. BULLOCK.  What, a goold snuff-box?  Wauns, but thee WAST in
+luck, Corporal!
+
+CORPORAL.  No, not the snuff-box, but--A PINCH OF SNUFF,--ha!
+ha!--run me through the body if he didn't.  Could you but have seen
+the smile on Jack Churchill's grave face at this piece of
+generosity!  So, beckoning Colonel Cadogan up to him, he pinched his
+Ear and whispered--
+
+CAPTAIN.  "May I have the honour to dance a minuet with your
+Ladyship?"  The whole room was in titters at Jack's blunder; for, as
+you know very well, poor Lady Susan HAS A WOODEN LEG.  Ha! ha! fancy
+a minuet and a wooden leg, hey, my dear?--
+
+MRS. CATHERINE.  Giggle--giggle--giggle:  he! he! he!  Oh, Captain,
+you rogue, you--
+
+SECOND TABLE.  Haw! haw! haw!  Well you be a foony mon, Sergeant,
+zure enoff.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+This little specimen of the conversation must be sufficient.  It
+will show pretty clearly that EACH of the two military commanders
+was conducting his operations with perfect success.  Three of the
+detachment of five attacked by the Corporal surrendered to him:  Mr.
+Bullock, namely, who gave in at a very early stage of the evening,
+and ignominiously laid down his arms under the table, after standing
+not more than a dozen volleys of beer; Mr. Blacksmith's boy, and a
+labourer whose name we have not been able to learn.  Mr. Butcher
+himself was on the point of yielding, when he was rescued by the
+furious charge of a detachment that marched to his relief:  his wife
+namely, who, with two squalling children, rushed into the "Bugle,"
+boxed Butcher's ears, and kept up such a tremendous fire of oaths
+and screams upon the Corporal, that he was obliged to retreat.
+Fixing then her claws into Mr. Butcher's hair, she proceeded to drag
+him out of the premises; and thus Mr. Brock was overcome.  His
+attack upon John Hayes was a still greater failure; for that young
+man seemed to be invincible by drink, if not by love:  and at the
+end of the drinking-bout was a great deal more cool than the
+Corporal himself; to whom he wished a very polite good-evening, as
+calmly he took his hat to depart.  He turned to look at Catherine,
+to be sure, and then he was not quite so calm:  but Catherine did
+not give any reply to his good-night.  She was seated at the
+Captain's table playing at cribbage with him; and though Count
+Gustavus Maximilian lost every game, he won more than he lost,--sly
+fellow!--and Mrs. Catherine was no match for him.
+
+It is to be presumed that Hayes gave some information to Mrs. Score,
+the landlady:  for, on leaving the kitchen, he was seen to linger
+for a moment in the bar; and very soon after Mrs. Catherine was
+called away from her attendance on the Count, who, when he asked for
+a sack and toast, was furnished with those articles by the landlady
+herself:  and, during the half-hour in which he was employed in
+consuming this drink, Monsieur de Galgenstein looked very much
+disturbed and out of humour, and cast his eyes to the door
+perpetually; but no Catherine came.  At last, very sulkily, he
+desired to be shown to bed, and walked as well as he could (for, to
+say truth, the noble Count was by this time somewhat unsteady on his
+legs) to his chamber.  It was Mrs. Score who showed him to it, and
+closed the curtains, and pointed triumphantly to the whiteness of
+the sheets.
+
+"It's a very comfortable room," said she, "though not the best in
+the house; which belong of right to your Lordship's worship; but our
+best room has two beds, and Mr. Corporal is in that, locked and
+double-locked, with his three tipsy recruits.  But your honour will
+find this here bed comfortable and well-aired; I've slept in it
+myself this eighteen years."
+
+"What, my good woman, you are going to sit up, eh?  It's cruel hard
+on you, madam."
+
+"Sit up, my Lord? bless you, no!  I shall have half of our Cat's
+bed; as I always do when there's company."  And with this Mrs. Score
+curtseyed and retired.
+
+Very early the next morning the active landlady and her bustling
+attendant had prepared the ale and bacon for the Corporal and his
+three converts, and had set a nice white cloth for the Captain's
+breakfast.  The young blacksmith did not eat with much satisfaction;
+but Mr. Bullock and his friend betrayed no sign of discontent,
+except such as may be consequent upon an evening's carouse.  They
+walked very contentedly to be registered before Doctor Dobbs, who
+was also justice of the peace, and went in search of their slender
+bundles, and took leave of their few acquaintances without much
+regret:  for the gentlemen had been bred in the workhouse, and had
+not, therefore, a large circle of friends.
+
+It wanted only an hour of noon, and the noble Count had not
+descended.  The men were waiting for him, and spent much of the
+Queen's money (earned by the sale of their bodies overnight) while
+thus expecting him.  Perhaps Mrs. Catherine expected him too, for
+she had offered many times to run up--with my Lord's boots--with the
+hot water--to show Mr. Brock the way; who sometimes condescended to
+officiate as barber.  But on all these occasions Mrs. Score had
+prevented her; not scolding, but with much gentleness and smiling.
+At last, more gentle and smiling than ever, she came downstairs and
+said, "Catherine darling, his honour the Count is mighty hungry this
+morning, and vows he could pick the wing of a fowl.  Run down,
+child, to Farmer Brigg's and get one:  pluck it before you bring it,
+you know, and we will make his Lordship a pretty breakfast."
+
+Catherine took up her basket, and away she went by the back-yard,
+through the stables.  There she heard the little horse-boy whistling
+and hissing after the manner of horseboys; and there she learned
+that Mrs. Score had been inventing an ingenious story to have her
+out of the way.  The ostler said he was just going to lead the two
+horses round to the door.  The Corporal had been, and they were
+about to start on the instant for Stratford.
+
+The fact was that Count Gustavus Adolphus, far from wishing to pick
+the wing of a fowl, had risen with a horror and loathing for
+everything in the shape of food, and for any liquor stronger than
+small beer.  Of this he had drunk a cup, and said he should ride
+immediately to Stratford; and when, on ordering his horses, he had
+asked politely of the landlady "why the d---- SHE always came up,
+and why she did not send the girl," Mrs. Score informed the Count
+that her Catherine was gone out for a walk along with the young man
+to whom she was to be married, and would not be visible that day.
+On hearing this the Captain ordered his horses that moment, and
+abused the wine, the bed, the house, the landlady, and everything
+connected with the "Bugle Inn."
+
+Out the horses came:  the little boys of the village gathered round;
+the recruits, with bunches of ribands in their beavers, appeared
+presently; Corporal Brock came swaggering out, and, slapping the
+pleased blacksmith on the back, bade him mount his horse; while the
+boys hurrah'd.  Then the Captain came out, gloomy and majestic; to
+him Mr. Brock made a military salute, which clumsily, and with much
+grinning, the recruits imitated.  "I shall walk on with these brave
+fellows, your honour, and meet you at Stratford," said the Corporal.
+"Good," said the Captain, as he mounted.  The landlady curtseyed;
+the children hurrah'd more; the little horse-boy, who held the
+bridle with one hand and the stirrup with the other, and expected a
+crown-piece from such a noble gentleman, got only a kick and a
+curse, as Count von Galgenstein shouted, "D----- you all, get out of
+the way!" and galloped off; and John Hayes, who had been sneaking
+about the inn all the morning, felt a weight off his heart when he
+saw the Captain ride off alone.
+
+O foolish Mrs. Score!  O dolt of a John Hayes!  If the landlady had
+allowed the Captain and the maid to have their way, and meet but for
+a minute before recruits, sergeant, and all, it is probable that no
+harm would have been done, and that this history would never have
+been written.
+
+When Count von Galgenstein had ridden half a mile on the Stratford
+road, looking as black and dismal as Napoleon galloping from the
+romantic village of Waterloo, he espied, a few score yards onwards,
+at the turn of the road, a certain object which caused him to check
+his horse suddenly, brought a tingling red into his cheeks, and made
+his heart to go thump--thump! against his side.  A young lass was
+sauntering slowly along the footpath, with a basket swinging from
+one hand, and a bunch of hedge-flowers in the other.  She stopped
+once or twice to add a fresh one to her nosegay, and might have seen
+him, the Captain thought; but no, she never looked directly towards
+him, and still walked on.  Sweet innocent! she was singing as if
+none were near; her voice went soaring up to the clear sky, and the
+Captain put his horse on the grass, that the sound of the hoofs
+might not disturb the music.
+
+     "When the kine had given a pailful,
+        And the sheep came bleating home,
+      Poll, who knew it would be healthful,
+        Went a-walking out with Tom.
+      Hand in hand, sir, on the land, sir,
+        As they walked to and fro,
+      Tom made jolly love to Polly,
+        But was answered no, no, no."
+
+The Captain had put his horse on the grass, that the sound of his
+hoofs might not disturb the music; and now he pushed its head on to
+the bank, where straightway "George of Denmark" began chewing of
+such a salad as grew there.  And now the Captain slid off
+stealthily; and smiling comically, and hitching up his great
+jack-boots, and moving forward with a jerking tiptoe step, he, just
+as she was trilling the last o-o-o of the last no in the above poem
+of Tom D'Urfey, came up to her, and touching her lightly on the
+waist, said,
+
+"My dear, your very humble servant."
+
+Mrs. Catherine (you know you have found her out long ago!) gave a
+scream and a start, and would have turned pale if she could.  As it
+was, she only shook all over, and said,
+
+"Oh, sir, how you DID frighten me!"
+
+"Frighten you, my rosebud! why, run me through, I'd die rather than
+frighten you.  Gad, child, tell me now, am I so VERY frightful?"
+
+"Oh no, your honour, I didn't mean that; only I wasn't thinking to
+meet you here, or that you would ride so early at all:  for, if you
+please, sir, I was going to fetch a chicken for your Lordship's
+breakfast, as my mistress said you would like one; and I thought,
+instead of going to Farmer Brigg's, down Birmingham way, as she told
+me, I'd go to Farmer Bird's, where the chickens is better, sir,--my
+Lord, I mean."
+
+"Said I'd like a chicken for breakfast, the old cat! why, I told her
+I would not eat a morsel to save me--I was so dru--I mean I ate such
+a good supper last night--and I bade her to send me a pot of small
+beer, and to tell you to bring it; and the wretch said you were gone
+out with your sweetheart--"
+
+"What! John Hayes, the creature?  Oh, what a naughty story-telling
+woman!"
+
+"--You had walked out with your sweetheart, and I was not to see you
+any more; and I was mad with rage, and ready to kill myself; I was,
+my dear."
+
+"Oh, sir! pray, PRAY don't."
+
+"For your sake, my sweet angel?"
+
+"Yes, for my sake, if such a poor girl as me can persuade noble
+gentlemen."
+
+"Well, then, for YOUR sake, I won't; no, I'll live; but why live?
+Hell and fury, if I do live I'm miserable without you; I am,--you
+know I am,--you adorable, beautiful, cruel, wicked Catherine!"
+
+Catherine's reply to this was "La, bless me!  I do believe your
+horse is running away."  And so he was! for having finished his meal
+in the hedge, he first looked towards his master and paused, as it
+were, irresolutely; then, by a sudden impulse, flinging up his tail
+and his hind legs, he scampered down the road.
+
+Mrs. Hall ran lightly after the horse, and the Captain after Mrs.
+Hall; and the horse ran quicker and quicker every moment, and might
+have led them a long chase,--when lo! debouching from a twist in the
+road, came the detachment of cavalry and infantry under Mr. Brock.
+The moment he was out of sight of the village, that gentleman had
+desired the blacksmith to dismount, and had himself jumped into the
+saddle, maintaining the subordination of his army by drawing a
+pistol and swearing that he would blow out the brains of any person
+who attempted to run.  When the Captain's horse came near the
+detachment he paused, and suffered himself to be caught by Tummas
+Bullock, who held him until the owner and Mrs. Catherine came up.
+
+Mr. Bullock looked comically grave when he saw the pair; but the
+Corporal graciously saluted Mrs. Catherine, and said it was a fine
+day for walking.
+
+"La, sir, and so it is," said she, panting in a very pretty and
+distressing way, "but not for RUNNING.  I do protest--ha!--and vow
+that I really can scarcely stand.  I'm so tired of running after
+that naughty naughty horse!"
+
+"How do, Cattern?" said Thomas.  "Zee, I be going a zouldiering
+because thee wouldn't have me."  And here Mr. Bullock grinned.  Mrs.
+Catherine made no sort of reply, but protested once more she should
+die of running.  If the truth were told, she was somewhat vexed at
+the arrival of the Corporal's detachment, and had had very serious
+thoughts of finding herself quite tired just as he came in sight.
+
+A sudden thought brought a smile of bright satisfaction in the
+Captain's eyes.  He mounted the horse which Tummas still held.
+"TIRED, Mrs Catherine," said he, "and for my sake?  By heavens! you
+shan't walk a step farther.  No, you shall ride back with a guard of
+honour!  Back to the village, gentlemen!--rightabout face! Show
+those fellows, Corporal, how to rightabout face.  Now, my dear,
+mount behind me on Snowball; he's easy as a sedan.  Put your dear
+little foot on the toe of my boot.  There now,--up!--jump! hurrah!"
+
+"THAT'S not the way, Captain," shouted out Thomas, still holding on
+to the rein as the horse began to move.  "Thee woan't goo with him,
+will thee, Catty?"
+
+But Mrs. Catherine, though she turned away her head, never let go
+her hold round the Captain's waist; and he, swearing a dreadful oath
+at Thomas, struck him across the face and hands with his riding
+whip.  The poor fellow, who at the first cut still held on to the
+rein, dropped it at the second, and as the pair galloped off, sat
+down on the roadside and fairly began to weep.
+
+"MARCH, you dog!" shouted out the Corporal a minute after.  And so
+he did:  and when next he saw Mrs. Catherine she WAS the Captain's
+lady sure enough, and wore a grey hat, with a blue feather, and red
+riding-coat trimmed with silverlace.  But Thomas was then on a
+bare-backed horse, which Corporal Brock was flanking round a ring,
+and he was so occupied looking between his horse's ears that he had
+no time to cry then, and at length got the better of his attachment.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+This being a good opportunity for closing Chapter I, we ought,
+perhaps, to make some apologies to the public for introducing them
+to characters that are so utterly worthless; as we confess all our
+heroes, with the exception of Mr. Bullock, to be.  In this we have
+consulted nature and history, rather than the prevailing taste and
+the general manner of authors.  The amusing novel of "Ernest
+Maltravers," for instance, opens with a seduction; but then it is
+performed by people of the strictest virtue on both sides:  and
+there is so much religion and philosophy in the heart of the
+seducer, so much tender innocence in the soul of the seduced, that--
+bless the little dears!--their very peccadilloes make one interested
+in them; and their naughtiness becomes quite sacred, so deliciously
+is it described.  Now, if we ARE to be interested by rascally
+actions, let us have them with plain faces, and let them be
+performed, not by virtuous philosophers, but by rascals.  Another
+clever class of novelists adopt the contrary system, and create
+interest by making their rascals perform virtuous actions.  Against
+these popular plans we here solemnly appeal.  We say, let your
+rogues in novels act like rogues, and your honest men like honest
+men; don't let us have any juggling and thimble-rigging with virtue
+and vice, so that, at the end of three volumes, the bewildered
+reader shall not know which is which; don't let us find ourselves
+kindling at the generous qualities of thieves, and sympathising with
+the rascalities of noble hearts.  For our own part, we know what the
+public likes, and have chosen rogues for our characters, and have
+taken a story from the "Newgate Calendar," which we hope to follow
+out to edification.  Among the rogues, at least, we will have
+nothing that shall be mistaken for virtues.  And if the British
+public (after calling for three or four editions) shall give up, not
+only our rascals, but the rascals of all other authors, we shall be
+content:--we shall apply to Government for a pension, and think that
+our duty is done.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.  IN WHICH ARE DEPICTED THE PLEASURES OF A SENTIMENTAL
+ATTACHMENT.
+
+
+
+It will not be necessary, for the purpose of this history, to follow
+out very closely all the adventures which occurred to Mrs. Catherine
+from the period when she quitted the "Bugle" and became the
+Captain's lady; for although it would be just as easy to show as
+not, that the young woman, by following the man of her heart, had
+only yielded to an innocent impulse, and by remaining with him for a
+certain period, had proved the depth and strength of her affection
+for him,--although we might make very tender and eloquent apologies
+for the error of both parties, the reader might possibly be
+disgusted at such descriptions and such arguments:  which, besides,
+are already done to his hand in the novel of "Ernest Maltravers"
+before mentioned.
+
+From the gentleman's manner towards Mrs. Catherine, and from his
+brilliant and immediate success, the reader will doubtless have
+concluded, in the first place, that Gustavus Adolphus had not a very
+violent affection for Mrs. Cat; in the second place, that he was a
+professional lady-killer, and therefore likely at some period to
+resume his profession; thirdly, and to conclude, that a connection
+so begun, must, in the nature of things, be likely to end speedily.
+
+And so, to do the Count justice, it would, if he had been allowed to
+follow his own inclination entirely; for (as many young gentlemen
+will, and yet no praise to them) in about a week he began to be
+indifferent, in a month to be weary, in two months to be angry, in
+three to proceed to blows and curses; and, in short, to repent most
+bitterly the hour when he had ever been induced to present Mrs.
+Catherine the toe of his boot, for the purpose of lifting her on to
+his horse.
+
+"Egad!" said he to the Corporal one day, when confiding his griefs
+to Mr. Brock, "I wish my toe had been cut off before ever it served
+as a ladder to this little vixen."
+
+"Or perhaps your honour would wish to kick her downstairs with it?"
+delicately suggested Mr. Brock.
+
+"Kick her! why, the wench would hold so fast by the banisters that I
+COULD not kick her down, Mr. Brock.  To tell you a bit of a secret,
+I HAVE tried as much--not to kick her--no, no, not kick her,
+certainly:  that's ungentlemanly--but to INDUCE her to go back to
+that cursed pot-house where we fell in with her.  I have given her
+many hints--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I saw your honour give her one yesterday--with a mug of
+beer.  By the laws, as the ale run all down her face, and she
+clutched a knife to run at you, I don't think I ever saw such a
+she-devil!  That woman will do for your honour some day, if you
+provoke her."
+
+"Do for ME?  No, hang it, Mr. Brock, never!  She loves every hair of
+my head, sir:  she worships me, Corporal.  Egad, yes! she worships
+me; and would much sooner apply a knife to her own weasand than
+scratch my little finger!"
+
+"I think she does," said Mr. Brock.
+
+"I'm sure of it," said the Captain.  "Women, look you, are like
+dogs, they like to be ill-treated:  they like it, sir; I know they
+do.  I never had anything to do with a woman in my life but I
+ill-treated her, and she liked me the better."
+
+"Mrs. Hall ought to be VERY fond of you then, sure enough!" said Mr.
+Corporal.
+
+"Very fond;--ha, ha! Corporal, you wag you--and so she IS very fond.
+Yesterday, after the knife-and-beer scene--no wonder I threw the
+liquor in her face:  it was so dev'lish flat that no gentleman could
+drink it:  and I told her never to draw it till dinner-time--"
+
+"Oh, it was enough to put an angel in a fury!" said Brock.
+
+"Well, yesterday, after the knife business, when you had got the
+carver out of her hand, off she flings to her bedroom, will not eat
+a bit of dinner forsooth, and remains locked up for a couple of
+hours.  At two o'clock afternoon (I was over a tankard), out comes
+the little she-devil, her face pale, her eyes bleared, and the tip
+of her nose as red as fire with sniffling and weeping.  Making for
+my hand, 'Max,' says she, 'will you forgive me?'  'What!' says I.
+'Forgive a murderess?' says I.  'No, curse me, never!'  'Your
+cruelty will kill me,' sobbed she.  'Cruelty be hanged!' says I;
+'didn't you draw that beer an hour before dinner?'  She could say
+nothing to THIS, you know, and I swore that every time she did so, I
+would fling it into her face again.  Whereupon back she flounced to
+her chamber, where she wept and stormed until night-time."
+
+"When you forgave her?"
+
+"I DID forgive her, that's positive.  You see I had supped at the
+'Rose' along with Tom Trippet and half-a-dozen pretty fellows; and I
+had eased a great fat-headed Warwickshire landjunker--what d'ye call
+him?--squire, of forty pieces; and I'm dev'lish good-humoured when
+I've won, and so Cat and I made it up:  but I've taught her never to
+bring me stale beer again--ha, ha!"
+
+This conversation will explain, a great deal better than any
+description of ours, however eloquent, the state of things as
+between Count Maximilian and Mrs. Catherine, and the feelings which
+they entertained for each other.  The woman loved him, that was the
+fact.  And, as we have shown in the previous chapter how John Hayes,
+a mean-spirited fellow as ever breathed, in respect of all other
+passions a pigmy, was in the passion of love a giant, and followed
+Mrs. Catherine with a furious longing which might seem at the first
+to be foreign to his nature; in the like manner, and playing at
+cross-purposes, Mrs. Hall had become smitten of the Captain; and, as
+he said truly, only liked him the better for the brutality which she
+received at his hands.  For it is my opinion, madam, that love is a
+bodily infirmity, from which humankind can no more escape than from
+small-pox; and which attacks every one of us, from the first duke in
+the Peerage down to Jack Ketch inclusive:  which has no respect for
+rank, virtue, or roguery in man, but sets each in his turn in a
+fever; which breaks out the deuce knows how or why, and, raging its
+appointed time, fills each individual of the one sex with a blind
+fury and longing for some one of the other (who may be pure, gentle,
+blue-eyed, beautiful, and good; or vile, shrewish, squinting,
+hunchbacked, and hideous, according to circumstances and luck);
+which dies away, perhaps, in the natural course, if left to have its
+way, but which contradiction causes to rage more furiously than
+ever.  Is not history, from the Trojan war upwards and downwards,
+full of instances of such strange inexplicable passions?  Was not
+Helen, by the most moderate calculation, ninety years of age when
+she went off with His Royal Highness Prince Paris of Troy?  Was not
+Madame La Valliere ill-made, blear-eyed, tallow-complexioned,
+scraggy, and with hair like tow?  Was not Wilkes the ugliest,
+charmingest, most successful man in the world?  Such instances might
+be carried out so as to fill a volume; but cui bono?  Love is fate,
+and not will; its origin not to be explained, its progress
+irresistible:  and the best proof of this may be had at Bow Street
+any day, where if you ask any officer of the establishment how they
+take most thieves, he will tell you at the houses of the women.
+They must see the dear creatures though they hang for it; they will
+love, though they have their necks in the halter.  And with regard
+to the other position, that ill-usage on the part of the man does
+not destroy the affection of the woman, have we not numberless
+police-reports, showing how, when a bystander would beat a husband
+for beating his wife, man and wife fall together on the interloper
+and punish him for his meddling?
+
+These points, then, being settled to the satisfaction of all
+parties, the reader will not be disposed to question the assertion
+that Mrs. Hall had a real affection for the gallant Count, and grew,
+as Mr. Brock was pleased to say, like a beefsteak, more tender as
+she was thumped.  Poor thing, poor thing! his flashy airs and smart
+looks had overcome her in a single hour; and no more is wanted to
+plunge into love over head and ears; no more is wanted to make a
+first love with--and a woman's first love lasts FOR EVER (a man's
+twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth is perhaps the best):  you can't kill
+it, do what you will; it takes root, and lives and even grows, never
+mind what the soil may be in which it is planted, or the bitter
+weather it must bear--often as one has seen a wallflower grow--out
+of a stone.
+
+In the first weeks of their union, the Count had at least been
+liberal to her:  she had a horse and fine clothes, and received
+abroad some of those flattering attentions which she held at such
+high price.  He had, however, some ill-luck at play, or had been
+forced to pay some bills, or had some other satisfactory reason for
+being poor, and his establishment was very speedily diminished.  He
+argued that, as Mrs. Catherine had been accustomed to wait on others
+all her life, she might now wait upon herself and him; and when the
+incident of the beer arose, she had been for some time employed as
+the Count's housekeeper, with unlimited superintendence over his
+comfort, his cellar, his linen, and such matters as bachelors are
+delighted to make over to active female hands.  To do the poor
+wretch justice, she actually kept the man's menage in the best
+order; nor was there any point of extravagance with which she could
+be charged, except a little extravagance of dress displayed on the
+very few occasions when he condescended to walk abroad with her, and
+extravagance of language and passion in the frequent quarrels they
+had together.  Perhaps in such a connection as subsisted between
+this precious couple, these faults are inevitable on the part of the
+woman.  She must be silly and vain, and will pretty surely therefore
+be fond of dress; and she must, disguise it as she will, be
+perpetually miserable and brooding over her fall, which will cause
+her to be violent and quarrelsome.
+
+Such, at least, was Mrs. Hall; and very early did the poor vain
+misguided wretch begin to reap what she had sown.
+
+For a man, remorse under these circumstances is perhaps uncommon.
+No stigma affixes on HIM for betraying a woman; no bitter pangs of
+mortified vanity; no insulting looks of superiority from his
+neighbour, and no sentence of contemptuous banishment is read
+against him; these all fall on the tempted, and not on the tempter,
+who is permitted to go free.  The chief thing that a man learns
+after having successfully practised on a woman is to despise the
+poor wretch whom he has won.  The game, in fact, and the glory, such
+as it is, is all his, and the punishment alone falls upon her.
+Consider this, ladies, when charming young gentlemen come to woo you
+with soft speeches.  You have nothing to win, except wretchedness,
+and scorn, and desertion.  Consider this, and be thankful to your
+Solomons for telling it.
+
+It came to pass, then, that the Count had come to have a perfect
+contempt and indifference for Mrs. Hall;--how should he not for a
+young person who had given herself up to him so easily?--and would
+have been quite glad of any opportunity of parting with her.  But
+there was a certain lingering shame about the man, which prevented
+him from saying at once and abruptly, "Go!" and the poor thing  did
+not choose to take such hints as fell out in the course of their
+conversation and quarrels.  And so they kept on together, he
+treating her with simple insult, and she hanging on desperately, by
+whatever feeble twig she could find, to the rock beyond which all
+was naught, or death, to her.
+
+Well, after the night with Tom Trippet and the pretty fellows at the
+"Rose," to which we have heard the Count allude in the conversation
+just recorded, Fortune smiled on him a good deal; for the
+Warwickshire squire, who had lost forty pieces on that occasion,
+insisted on having his revenge the night after; when, strange to
+say, a hundred and fifty more found their way into the pouch of his
+Excellency the Count.  Such a sum as this quite set the young
+nobleman afloat again, and brought back a pleasing equanimity to his
+mind, which had been a good deal disturbed in the former difficult
+circumstances; and in this, for a little and to a certain extent,
+poor Cat had the happiness to share.  He did not alter the style of
+his establishment, which consisted, as before, of herself and a
+small person who acted as scourer, kitchen-wench, and scullion; Mrs.
+Catherine always putting her hand to the principal pieces of the
+dinner; but he treated his mistress with tolerable good-humour; or,
+to speak more correctly, with such bearable brutality as might be
+expected from a man like him to a woman in her condition.  Besides,
+a certain event was about to take place, which not unusually occurs
+in circumstances of this nature, and Mrs. Catherine was expecting
+soon to lie in.
+
+The Captain, distrusting naturally the strength of his own paternal
+feelings, had kindly endeavoured to provide a parent for the coming
+infant; and to this end had opened a negotiation with our friend Mr.
+Thomas Bullock, declaring that Mrs. Cat should have a fortune of
+twenty guineas, and reminding Tummas of his ancient flame for her:
+but Mr. Tummas, when this proposition was made to him, declined it,
+with many oaths, and vowed that he was perfectly satisfied with his
+present bachelor condition.  In this dilemma, Mr. Brock stepped
+forward, who declared himself very ready to accept Mrs. Catherine
+and her fortune:  and might possibly have become the possessor of
+both, had not Mrs. Cat, the moment she heard of the proposed
+arrangement, with fire in her eyes, and rage--oh, how bitter!--in
+her heart, prevented the success of the measure by proceeding
+incontinently to the first justice of the peace, and there swearing
+before his worship who was the father of the coming child.
+
+This proceeding, which she had expected would cause not a little
+indignation on the part of her lord and master, was received by him,
+strangely enough, with considerable good-humour:  he swore that the
+wench had served him a good trick, and was rather amused at the
+anger, the outbreak of fierce rage and contumely, and the wretched
+wretched tears of heartsick desperation, which followed her
+announcement of this step to him.  For Mr. Brock, she repelled his
+offer with scorn and loathing, and treated the notion of a union
+with Mr. Bullock with yet fiercer contempt.  Marry him indeed! a
+workhouse pauper carrying a brown-bess!  She would have died sooner,
+she said, or robbed on the highway.  And so, to do her justice, she
+would:  for the little minx was one of the vainest creatures in
+existence, and vanity (as I presume everybody knows) becomes THE
+principle in certain women's hearts--their moral spectacles, their
+conscience, their meat and drink, their only rule of right and
+wrong.
+
+As for Mr. Tummas, he, as we have seen, was quite unfriendly to the
+proposition as she could be; and the Corporal, with a good deal of
+comical gravity, vowed that, as he could not be satisfied in his
+dearest wishes, he would take to drinking for a consolation:  which
+he straightway did.
+
+"Come, Tummas," said he to Mr. Bullock "since we CAN'T have the girl
+of our hearts, why, hang it, Tummas, let's drink her health!"  To
+which Bullock had no objection.  And so strongly did the
+disappointment weigh upon honest Corporal Brock, that even when,
+after unheard-of quantities of beer, he could scarcely utter a word,
+he was seen absolutely to weep, and, in accents almost
+unintelligible, to curse his confounded ill-luck at being deprived,
+not of a wife, but of a child:  he wanted one so, he said, to
+comfort him in his old age.
+
+The time of Mrs. Catherine's couche drew near, arrived, and was gone
+through safely.  She presented to the world a chopping boy, who
+might use, if he liked, the Galgenstein arms with a bar-sinister;
+and in her new cares and duties had not so many opportunities as
+usual of quarrelling with the Count:  who, perhaps, respected her
+situation, or, at least, was so properly aware of the necessity of
+quiet to her, that he absented himself from home morning, noon, and
+night.
+
+The Captain had, it must be confessed, turned these continued
+absences to a considerable worldly profit, for he played
+incessantly; and, since his first victory over the Warwickshire
+Squire, Fortune had been so favourable to him, that he had at
+various intervals amassed a sum of nearly a thousand pounds, which
+he used to bring home as he won; and which he deposited in a strong
+iron chest, cunningly screwed down by himself under his own bed.
+This Mrs. Catherine regularly made, and the treasure underneath it
+could be no secret to her.  However, the noble Count kept the key,
+and bound her by many solemn oaths (that he discharged at her
+himself) not to reveal to any other person the existence of the
+chest and its contents.
+
+But it is not in a woman's nature to keep such secrets; and the
+Captain, who left her for days and days, did not reflect that she
+would seek for confidants elsewhere.  For want of a female
+companion, she was compelled to bestow her sympathies upon Mr.
+Brock; who, as the Count's corporal, was much in his lodgings, and
+who did manage to survive the disappointment which he had
+experienced by Mrs. Catherine's refusal of him.
+
+About two months after the infant's birth, the Captain, who was
+annoyed by its squalling, put it abroad to nurse, and dismissed its
+attendant.  Mrs. Catherine now resumed her household duties, and
+was, as before, at once mistress and servant of the establishment.
+As such, she had the keys of the beer, and was pretty sure of the
+attentions of the Corporal; who became, as we have said, in the
+Count's absence, his lady's chief friend and companion.  After the
+manner of ladies, she very speedily confided to him all her domestic
+secrets; the causes of her former discontent; the Count's ill-
+treatment of her; the wicked names he called her; the prices that
+all her gowns had cost her; how he beat her; how much money he won
+and lost at play; how she had once pawned a coat for him; how he had
+four new ones, laced, and paid for; what was the best way of
+cleaning and keeping gold-lace, of making cherry-brandy, pickling
+salmon, etc., etc.  Her confidences upon all these subjects used to
+follow each other in rapid succession; and Mr. Brock became, ere
+long, quite as well acquainted with the Captain's history for the
+last year as the Count himself:--for he was careless, and forgot
+things; women never do.  They chronicle all the lover's small
+actions, his words, his headaches, the dresses he has worn, the
+things he has liked for dinner on certain days;--all which
+circumstances commonly are expunged from the male brain immediately
+after they have occurred, but remain fixed with the female.
+
+To Brock, then, and to Brock only (for she knew no other soul), Mrs.
+Cat breathed, in strictest confidence, the history of the Count's
+winnings, and his way of disposing of them; how he kept his money
+screwed down in an iron chest in their room; and a very lucky fellow
+did Brock consider his officer for having such a large sum.  He and
+Cat looked at the chest:  it was small, but mighty strong, sure
+enough, and would defy picklocks and thieves.  Well, if any man
+deserved money, the Captain did ("though he might buy me a few yards
+of that lace I love so," interrupted Cat),--if any man deserved
+money, he did, for he spent it like a prince, and his hand was
+always in his pocket.
+
+It must now be stated that Monsieur de Galgenstein had, during Cat's
+seclusion, cast his eyes upon a young lady of good fortune, who
+frequented the Assembly at Birmingham, and who was not a little
+smitten by his title and person.  The "four new coats, laced, and
+paid for," as Cat said, had been purchased, most probably, by his
+Excellency for the purpose of dazzling the heiress; and he and the
+coats had succeeded so far as to win from the young woman an actual
+profession of love, and a promise of marriage provided Pa would
+consent.  This was obtained,--for Pa was a tradesman; and I suppose
+every one of my readers has remarked how great an effect a title has
+on the lower classes.  Yes, thank Heaven! there is about a freeborn
+Briton a cringing baseness, and lickspittle awe of rank, which does
+not exist under any tyranny in Europe, and is only to be found here
+and in America.
+
+All these negotiations had been going on quite unknown to Cat; and,
+as the Captain had determined, before two months were out, to fling
+that young woman on the pave, he was kind to her in the meanwhile:
+people always are when they are swindling you, or meditating an
+injury against you.
+
+The poor girl had much too high an opinion of her own charms to
+suspect that the Count could be unfaithful to them, and had no
+notion of the plot that was formed against her.  But Mr. Brock had:
+for he had seen many times a gilt coach with a pair of fat white
+horses ambling in the neighbourhood of the town, and the Captain on
+his black steed caracolling majestically by its side; and he had
+remarked a fat, pudgy, pale-haired woman treading heavily down the
+stairs of the Assembly, leaning on the Captain's arm:  all these Mr.
+Brock had seen, not without reflection.  Indeed, the Count one day,
+in great good-humour, had slapped him on the shoulder and told him
+that he was about speedily to purchase a regiment; when, by his
+great gods, Mr. Brock should have a pair of colours.  Perhaps this
+promise occasioned his silence to Mrs. Catherine hitherto; perhaps
+he never would have peached at all; and perhaps, therefore, this
+history would never have been written, but for a small circumstance
+which occurred at this period.
+
+"What can you want with that drunken old Corporal always about your
+quarters?" said Mr. Trippet to the Count one day, as they sat over
+their wine, in the midst of a merry company, at the Captain's rooms.
+
+"What!" said he.  "Old Brock?  The old thief has been more useful to
+me than many a better man.  He is as brave in a row as a lion, as
+cunning in intrigue as a fox; he can nose a dun at an inconceivable
+distance, and scent out a pretty woman be she behind ever so many
+stone walls.  If a gentleman wants a good rascal now, I can
+recommend him.  I am going to reform, you know, and must turn him
+out of my service."
+
+"And pretty Mrs. Cat?"
+
+"Oh, curse pretty Mrs. Cat! she may go too."
+
+"And the brat?"
+
+"Why, you have parishes, and what not, here in England.  Egad! if a
+gentleman were called upon to keep all his children, there would be
+no living:  no, stap my vitals! Croesus couldn't stand it."
+
+"No, indeed," said Mr. Trippet:  "you are right; and when a
+gentleman marries, he is bound in honour to give up such low
+connections as are useful when he is a bachelor."
+
+"Of course; and give them up I will, when the sweet Mrs. Dripping is
+mine.  As for the girl, you can have her, Tom Trippet, if you take a
+fancy to her; and as for the Corporal, he may be handed over to my
+successor in Cutts's:--for I will have a regiment to myself, that's
+poz; and to take with me such a swindling, pimping, thieving,
+brandy-faced rascal as this Brock will never do.  Egad! he's a
+disgrace to the service.  As it is, I've often a mind to have the
+superannuated vagabond drummed out of the corps."
+
+Although this resume of Mr. Brock's character and accomplishments
+was very just, it came perhaps with an ill grace from Count Gustavus
+Adolphus Maximilian, who had profited by all his qualities, and who
+certainly would never have given this opinion of them had he known
+that the door of his dining-parlour was open, and that the gallant
+Corporal, who was in the passage, could hear every syllable that
+fell from the lips of his commanding officer.  We shall not say,
+after the fashion of the story-books, that Mr. Brock listened with a
+flashing eye and a distended nostril; that his chest heaved
+tumultuously, and that his hand fell down mechanically to his side,
+where it played with the brass handle of his sword.  Mr. Kean would
+have gone through most of these bodily exercises had he been acting
+the part of a villain enraged and disappointed like Corporal Brock;
+but that gentleman walked away without any gestures of any kind, and
+as gently as possible.  "He'll turn me out of the regiment, will
+he?" says he, quite piano; and then added (con molta espressione),
+"I'll do for him."
+
+And it is to be remarked how generally, in cases of this nature,
+gentlemen stick to their word.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.  IN WHICH A NARCOTIC IS ADMINISTERED, AND A GREAT DEAL
+OF GENTEEL SOCIETY DEPICTED.
+
+
+
+When the Corporal, who had retreated to the street-door immediately
+on hearing the above conversation, returned to the Captain's
+lodgings and paid his respects to Mrs. Catherine, he found that lady
+in high good-humour.  The Count had been with her, she said, along
+with a friend of his, Mr. Trippet; had promised her twelve yards of
+the lace she coveted so much; had vowed that the child should have
+as much more for a cloak; and had not left her until he had sat with
+her for an hour, or more, over a bowl of punch, which he made on
+purpose for her.  Mr. Trippet stayed too.  "A mighty pleasant man,"
+said she; "only not very wise, and seemingly a good deal in liquor."
+
+"A good deal indeed!" said the Corporal.  "He was so tipsy just now
+that he could hardly stand.  He and his honour were talking to Nan
+Fantail in the market-place; and she pulled Trippet's wig off, for
+wanting to kiss her."
+
+"The nasty fellow!" said Mrs. Cat, "to demean himself with such low
+people as Nan Fantail, indeed!  Why, upon my conscience now,
+Corporal, it was but an hour ago that Mr. Trippet swore he never saw
+such a pair of eyes as mine, and would like to cut the Captain's
+throat for the love of me.  Nan Fantail, indeed!"
+
+"Nan's an honest girl, Madam Catherine, and was a great favourite of
+the Captain's before someone else came in his way.  No one can say a
+word against her--not a word."
+
+"And pray, Corporal, who ever did?" said Mrs. Cat, rather offended.
+"A nasty, ugly slut!  I wonder what the men can see in her?"
+
+"She has got a smart way with her, sure enough; it's what amuses the
+men, and--"
+
+"And what?  You don't mean to say that my Max is fond of her NOW?"
+said Mrs. Catherine, looking very fierce.
+
+"Oh, no; not at all:  not of HER;--that is--"
+
+"Not of HER!" screamed she.  "Of whom, then?"
+
+"Oh, psha! nonsense!  Of you, my dear, to be sure; who else should
+he care for?  And, besides, what business is it of mine?"  And
+herewith the Corporal began whistling, as if he would have no more
+of the conversation.  But Mrs. Cat was not to be satisfied,--not
+she,--and carried on her cross-questions.
+
+"Why, look you," said the Corporal, after parrying many of
+these,--"Why, look you, I'm an old fool, Catherine, and I must blab.
+That man has been the best friend I ever had, and so I was quiet;
+but I can't keep it in any longer,--no, hang me if I can!  It's my
+belief he's acting like a rascal by you:  he deceives you,
+Catherine; he's a scoundrel, Mrs. Hall, that's the truth on't."
+
+Catherine prayed him to tell all he knew; and he resumed.
+
+"He wants you off his hands; he's sick of you, and so brought here
+that fool Tom Trippet, who has taken a fancy to you.  He has not the
+courage to turn you out of doors like a man; though indoors he can
+treat you like a beast.  But I'll tell you what he'll do.  In a
+month he will go to Coventry, or pretend to go there, on recruiting
+business.  No such thing, Mrs. Hall; he's going on MARRIAGE
+business; and he'll leave you without a farthing, to starve or to
+rot, for him.  It's all arranged, I tell you:  in a month, you are
+to be starved into becoming Tom Trippet's mistress; and his honour
+is to marry rich Miss Dripping, the twenty-thousand-pounder from
+London; and to purchase a regiment;--and to get old Brock drummed
+out of Cutts's too," said the Corporal, under his breath.  But he
+might have spoken out, if he chose; for the poor young woman had
+sunk on the ground in a real honest fit.
+
+"I thought I should give it her," said Mr. Brock as he procured a
+glass of water; and, lifting her on to a sofa, sprinkled the same
+over her.  "Hang it! how pretty she is."
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+When Mrs. Catherine came to herself again, Brock's tone with her was
+kind, and almost feeling.  Nor did the poor wench herself indulge in
+any subsequent shiverings and hysterics, such as usually follow the
+fainting-fits of persons of higher degree.  She pressed him for
+further explanations, which he gave, and to which she listened with
+a great deal of calmness; nor did many tears, sobs, sighs, or
+exclamations of sorrow or anger escape from her:  only when the
+Corporal was taking his leave, and said to her point-blank,--" Well,
+Mrs. Catherine, and what do you intend to do?" she did not reply a
+word; but gave a look which made him exclaim, on leaving the room,--
+
+"By heavens! the woman means murder!  I would not be the Holofernes
+to lie by the side of such a Judith as that--not I!"  And he went
+his way, immersed in deep thought.  When the Captain returned at
+night, she did not speak to him; and when he swore at her for being
+sulky, she only said she had a headache, and was dreadfully ill;
+with which excuse Gustavus Adolphus seemed satisfied, and left her
+to herself.
+
+He saw her the next morning for a moment:  he was going a-shooting.
+
+Catherine had no friend, as is usual in tragedies and romances,--no
+mysterious sorceress of her acquaintance to whom she could apply for
+poison,--so she went simply to the apothecaries, pretending at each
+that she had a dreadful toothache, and procuring from them as much
+laudanum as she thought would suit her purpose.
+
+When she went home again she seemed almost gay.  Mr. Brock
+complimented her upon the alteration in her appearance; and she was
+enabled to receive the Captain at his return from shooting in such a
+manner as made him remark that she had got rid of her sulks of the
+morning, and might sup with them, if she chose to keep her good-
+humour.  The supper was got ready, and the gentlemen had the
+punch-bowl when the cloth was cleared,--Mrs. Catherine, with her
+delicate hands, preparing the liquor.
+
+It is useless to describe the conversation that took place, or to
+reckon the number of bowls that were emptied; or to tell how Mr.
+Trippet, who was one of the guests, and declined to play at cards
+when some of the others began, chose to remain by Mrs. Catherine's
+side, and make violent love to her.  All this might be told, and the
+account, however faithful, would not be very pleasing.  No, indeed!
+And here, though we are only in the third chapter of this history,
+we feel almost sick of the characters that appear in it, and the
+adventures which they are called upon to go through.  But how can we
+help ourselves?  The public will hear of nothing but rogues; and the
+only way in which poor authors, who must live, can act honestly by
+the public and themselves, is to paint such thieves as they are:
+not, dandy, poetical, rose-water thieves; but real downright
+scoundrels, leading scoundrelly lives, drunken, profligate,
+dissolute, low; as scoundrels will be.  They don't quote Plato, like
+Eugene Aram; or live like gentlemen, and sing the pleasantest
+ballads in the world, like jolly Dick Turpin; or prate eternally
+about "to kalon,"* like that precious canting Maltravers, whom we
+all of us have read about and pitied; or die whitewashed saints,
+like poor "Biss Dadsy" in "Oliver Twist."  No, my dear madam, you
+and your daughters have no right to admire and sympathise with any
+such persons, fictitious or real:  you ought to be made cordially to
+detest, scorn, loathe, abhor, and abominate all people of this
+kidney.  Men of genius like those whose works we have above alluded
+to, have no business to make these characters interesting or
+agreeable; to be feeding your morbid fancies, or indulging their
+own, with such monstrous food.  For our parts, young ladies, we beg
+you to bottle up your tears, and not waste a single drop of them on
+any one of the heroes or heroines in this history:  they are all
+rascals, every soul of them, and behave "as sich." Keep your
+sympathy for those who deserve it:  don't carry it, for preference,
+to the Old Bailey, and grow maudlin over the company assembled
+there.
+
+* Anglicised version of the author's original Greek text.
+
+Just, then, have the kindness to fancy that the conversation which
+took place over the bowls of punch which Mrs. Catherine prepared,
+was such as might be expected to take place where the host was a
+dissolute, dare-devil, libertine captain of dragoons, the guests for
+the most part of the same class, and the hostess a young woman
+originally from a country alehouse, and for the present mistress to
+the entertainer of the society.  They talked, and they drank, and
+they grew tipsy; and very little worth hearing occurred during the
+course of the whole evening.  Mr. Brock officiated, half as the
+servant, half as the companion of the society.  Mr. Thomas Trippet
+made violent love to Mrs. Catherine, while her lord and master was
+playing at dice with the other gentlemen:  and on this night,
+strange to say, the Captain's fortune seemed to desert him.  The
+Warwickshire Squire, from whom he had won so much, had an amazing
+run of good luck.  The Captain called perpetually for more drink,
+and higher stakes, and lost almost every throw.  Three hundred, four
+hundred, six hundred--all his winnings of the previous months were
+swallowed up in the course of a few hours.  The Corporal looked on;
+and, to do him justice, seemed very grave as, sum by sum, the Squire
+scored down the Count's losses on the paper before him.
+
+Most of the company had taken their hats and staggered off.  The
+Squire and Mr. Trippet were the only two that remained, the latter
+still lingering by Mrs. Catherine's sofa and table; and as she, as
+we have stated, had been employed all the evening in mixing the
+liquor for the gamesters, he was at the headquarters of love and
+drink, and had swallowed so much of each as hardly to be able to
+speak.
+
+The dice went rattling on; the candles were burning dim, with great
+long wicks.  Mr. Trippet could hardly see the Captain, and thought,
+as far as his muzzy reason would let him, that the Captain could not
+see him:  so he rose from his chair as well as he could, and fell
+down on Mrs. Catherine's sofa.  His eyes were fixed, his face was
+pale, his jaw hung down; and he flung out his arms and said, in a
+maudlin voice, "Oh, you byoo-oo-oo-tifile Cathrine, I must have a
+kick-kick-iss."
+
+"Beast!" said Mrs. Catherine, and pushed him away.  The drunken
+wretch fell off the sofa, and on to the floor, where he stayed; and,
+after snorting out some unintelligible sounds, went to sleep.
+
+The dice went rattling on; the candles were burning dim, with great
+long wicks.
+
+"Seven's the main," cried the Count.  "Four.  Three to two against
+the caster."
+
+"Ponies," said the Warwickshire Squire.
+
+Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, clatter, NINE.  Clap, clap, clap,
+clap, ELEVEN.  Clutter, clutter, clutter, clutter:  "Seven it is,"
+says the Warwickshire Squire.  "That makes eight hundred, Count."
+
+"One throw for two hundred," said the Count.  "But stop!  Cat, give
+us some more punch."
+
+Mrs. Cat came forward; she looked a little pale, and her hand
+trembled somewhat.  "Here is the punch, Max," said she.  It was
+steaming hot, in a large glass.  "Don't drink it all," said she;
+"leave me some."
+
+"How dark it is!" said the Count, eyeing it.
+
+"It's the brandy," said Cat.
+
+"Well, here goes!  Squire, curse you! here's your health, and bad
+luck to you!" and he gulped off more than half the liquor at a
+draught.  But presently he put down the glass and cried, "What
+infernal poison is this, Cat?"
+
+"Poison!" said she.  "It's no poison.  Give me the glass."  And she
+pledged Max, and drank a little of it.  "'Tis good punch, Max, and
+of my brewing; I don't think you will ever get any better."  And she
+went back to the sofa again, and sat down, and looked at the
+players.
+
+Mr. Brock looked at her white face and fixed eyes with a grim kind
+of curiosity.  The Count sputtered, and cursed the horrid taste of
+the punch still; but he presently took the box, and made his
+threatened throw.
+
+As before, the Squire beat him; and having booked his winnings, rose
+from table as well as he might and besought to lead him downstairs;
+which Mr. Brock did.
+
+Liquor had evidently stupefied the Count:  he sat with his head
+between his hands, muttering wildly about ill-luck, seven's the
+main, bad punch, and so on.  The street-door banged to; and the
+steps of Brock and the Squire were heard, until they could be heard
+no more.
+
+"Max," said she; but he did not answer.  "Max," said she again,
+laying her hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Curse you," said that gentleman, "keep off, and don't be laying
+your paws upon me.  Go to bed, you jade, or to--,for what I care;
+and give me first some more punch--a gallon more punch, do you
+hear?"
+
+The gentleman, by the curses at the commencement of this little
+speech, and the request contained at the end of it, showed that his
+losses vexed him, and that he was anxious to forget them
+temporarily.
+
+"Oh, Max!" whimpered Mrs. Cat, "you--don't--want any more punch?"
+
+"Don't!  Shan't I be drunk in my own house, you cursed whimpering
+jade, you?  Get out!" and with this the Captain proceeded to
+administer a blow upon Mrs. Catherine's cheek.
+
+Contrary to her custom, she did not avenge it, or seek to do so, as
+on the many former occasions when disputes of this nature had arisen
+between the Count and her; but now Mrs. Catherine fell on her knees
+and, clasping her hands and looking pitifully in the Count's face,
+cried, "Oh, Count, forgive me, forgive me!"
+
+"Forgive you!  What for?  Because I slapped your face?  Ha, ha!
+I'll forgive you again, if you don't mind."
+
+"Oh, no, no, no!" said she, wringing her hands.  "It isn't that.
+Max, dear Max, will you forgive me?  It isn't the blow--I don't mind
+that; it's--"
+
+"It's what, you--maudlin fool?"
+
+"IT'S THE PUNCH!"
+
+The Count, who was more than half seas over, here assumed an air of
+much tipsy gravity.  "The punch!  No, I never will forgive you that
+last glass of punch.  Of all the foul, beastly drinks I ever tasted,
+that was the worst.  No, I never will forgive you that punch."
+
+"Oh, it isn't that, it isn't that!" said she.
+
+"I tell you it is that,--you!  That punch, I say that punch was no
+better than paw--aw-oison."  And here the Count's head sank back,
+and he fell to snore.
+
+"IT WAS POISON!" said she.
+
+"WHAT!" screamed he, waking up at once, and spurning her away from
+him.  "What, you infernal murderess, have you killed me?"
+
+"Oh, Max!--don't kill me, Max!  It was laudanum--indeed it was.  You
+were going to be married, and I was furious, and I went and got--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, you fiend," roared out the Count; and with more
+presence of mind than politeness, he flung the remainder of the
+liquor (and, indeed, the glass with it) at the head of Mrs.
+Catherine.  But the poisoned chalice missed its mark, and fell right
+on the nose of Mr. Tom Trippet, who was left asleep and unobserved
+under the table.
+
+Bleeding, staggering, swearing, indeed a ghastly sight, up sprang
+Mr. Trippet, and drew his rapier.  "Come on," says he; "never say
+die!  What's the row?  I'm ready for a dozen of you."  And he made
+many blind and furious passes about the room.
+
+"Curse you, we'll die together!" shouted the Count, as he too pulled
+out his toledo, and sprang at Mrs. Catherine.
+
+"Help! murder! thieves!" shrieked she.  "Save me, Mr. Trippet, save
+me!" and she placed that gentleman between herself and the Count,
+and then made for the door of the bedroom, and gained it, and bolted
+it.
+
+"Out of the way, Trippet," roared the Count--"out of the way, you
+drunken beast!  I'll murder her, I will--I'll have the devil's
+life."  And here he gave a swinging cut at Mr. Trippet's sword:  it
+sent the weapon whirling clean out of his hand, and through a window
+into the street.
+
+"Take my life, then," said Mr. Trippet:  "I'm drunk, but I'm a man,
+and, damme! will never say die."
+
+"I don't want your life, you stupid fool.  Hark you, Trippet, wake
+and be sober, if you can.  That woman has heard of my marriage with
+Miss Dripping."
+
+"Twenty thousand pound," ejaculated Trippet.
+
+"She has been jealous, I tell you, and POISONED us.  She has put
+laudanum into the punch."
+
+"What, in MY punch?" said Trippet, growing quite sober and losing
+his courage.  "O Lord! O Lord!"
+
+"Don't stand howling there, but run for a doctor; 'tis our only
+chance."  And away ran Mr. Trippet, as if the deuce were at his
+heels.
+
+The Count had forgotten his murderous intentions regarding his
+mistress, or had deferred them at least, under the consciousness of
+his own pressing danger.  And it must be said, in the praise of a
+man who had fought for and against Marlborough and Tallard, that his
+courage in this trying and novel predicament never for a moment
+deserted him, but that he showed the greatest daring, as well as
+ingenuity, in meeting and averting the danger.  He flew to the
+sideboard, where were the relics of a supper, and seizing the
+mustard and salt pots, and a bottle of oil, he emptied them all into
+a jug, into which he further poured a vast quantity of hot water.
+This pleasing mixture he then, without a moment's hesitation, placed
+to his lips, and swallowed as much of it as nature would allow him.
+But when he had imbibed about a quart, the anticipated effect was
+produced, and he was enabled, by the power of this ingenious
+extemporaneous emetic, to get rid of much of the poison which Mrs.
+Catherine had administered to him.
+
+He was employed in these efforts when the doctor entered, along with
+Mr. Brock and Mr. Trippet; who was not a little pleased to hear that
+the poisoned punch had not in all probability been given to him.  He
+was recommended to take some of the Count's mixture, as a
+precautionary measure; but this he refused, and retired home,
+leaving the Count under charge of the physician and his faithful
+corporal.
+
+It is not necessary to say what further remedies were employed by
+them to restore the Captain to health; but after some time the
+doctor, pronouncing that the danger was, he hoped, averted,
+recommended that his patient should be put to bed, and that somebody
+should sit by him; which Brock promised to do.
+
+"That she-devil will murder me, if you don't," gasped the poor
+Count.  "You must turn her out of the bedroom; or break open the
+door, if she refuses to let you in."
+
+And this step was found to be necessary; for, after shouting many
+times, and in vain, Mr. Brock found a small iron bar (indeed, he had
+the instrument for many days in his pocket), and forced the lock.
+The room was empty, the window was open:  the pretty barmaid of the
+"Bugle" had fled.
+
+"The chest," said the Count--"is the chest safe?"
+
+The Corporal flew to the bed, under which it was screwed, and
+looked, and said, "It IS safe, thank Heaven!"  The window was
+closed.  The Captain, who was too weak to stand without help, was
+undressed and put to bed.  The Corporal sat down by his side;
+slumber stole over the eyes of the patient; and his wakeful nurse
+marked with satisfaction the progress of the beneficent restorer of
+health.
+
+When the Captain awoke, as he did some time afterwards, he found,
+very much to his surprise, that a gag had been placed in his mouth,
+and that the Corporal was in the act of wheeling his bed to another
+part of the room.  He attempted to move, and gave utterance to such
+unintelligible sounds as could issue through a silk handkerchief.
+
+"If your honour stirs or cries out in the least, I will cut your
+honour's throat," said the Corporal.
+
+And then, having recourse to his iron bar (the reader will now see
+why he was provided with such an implement, for he had been
+meditating this coup for some days), he proceeded first to attempt
+to burst the lock of the little iron chest in which the Count kept
+his treasure, and, failing in this, to unscrew it from the ground;
+which operation he performed satisfactorily.
+
+"You see, Count," said he, calmly, "when rogues fall out there's the
+deuce to pay.  You'll have me drummed out of the regiment, will you?
+I'm going to leave it of my own accord, look you, and to live like a
+gentleman for the rest of my days.  Schlafen Sie wohl, noble
+Captain:  bon repos.  The Squire will be with you pretty early in
+the morning, to ask for the money you owe him."
+
+With these sarcastic observations Mr. Brock departed; not by the
+window, as Mrs. Catherine had done, but by the door, quietly, and so
+into the street.  And when, the next morning, the doctor came to
+visit his patient, he brought with him a story how, at the dead of
+night, Mr. Brock had roused the ostler at the stables where the
+Captain's horses were kept--had told him that Mrs. Catherine had
+poisoned the Count, and had run off with a thousand pounds; and how
+he and all lovers of justice ought to scour the country in pursuit
+of the criminal.  For this end Mr. Brock mounted the Count's best
+horse--that very animal on which he had carried away Mrs. Catherine:
+and thus, on a single night, Count Maximilian had lost his mistress,
+his money, his horse, his corporal, and was very near losing his
+life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.  IN WHICH MRS. CATHERINE BECOMES AN HONEST WOMAN AGAIN.
+
+
+
+In this woeful plight, moneyless, wifeless, horseless, corporalless,
+with a gag in his mouth and a rope round his body, are we compelled
+to leave the gallant Galgenstein, until his friends and the progress
+of this history shall deliver him from his durance.  Mr. Brock's
+adventures on the Captain's horse must likewise be pretermitted; for
+it is our business to follow Mrs. Catherine through the window by
+which she made her escape, and among the various chances that befell
+her.
+
+She had one cause to congratulate herself,--that she had not her
+baby at her back; for the infant was safely housed under the care of
+a nurse, to whom the Captain was answerable.  Beyond this her
+prospects were but dismal:  no home to fly to, but a few shillings
+in her pocket, and a whole heap of injuries and dark revengeful
+thoughts in her bosom:  it was a sad task to her to look either
+backwards or forwards.  Whither was she to fly?  How to live?  What
+good chance was to befriend her?  There was an angel watching over
+the steps of Mrs. Cat--not a good one, I think, but one of those
+from that unnameable place, who have their many subjects here on
+earth, and often are pleased to extricate them from worse
+perplexities.
+
+Mrs. Cat, now, had not committed murder, but as bad as murder; and
+as she felt not the smallest repentance in her heart--as she had, in
+the course of her life and connection with the Captain, performed
+and gloried in a number of wicked coquetries, idlenesses, vanities,
+lies, fits of anger, slanders, foul abuses, and what not--she was
+fairly bound over to this dark angel whom we have alluded to; and he
+dealt with her, and aided her, as one of his own children.
+
+I do not mean to say that, in this strait, he appeared to her in the
+likeness of a gentleman in black, and made her sign her name in
+blood to a document conveying over to him her soul, in exchange for
+certain conditions to be performed by him.  Such diabolical bargains
+have always appeared to me unworthy of the astute personage who is
+supposed to be one of the parties to them; and who would scarcely be
+fool enough to pay dearly for that which he can have in a few years
+for nothing.  It is not, then, to be supposed that a demon of
+darkness appeared to Mrs. Cat, and led her into a flaming chariot
+harnessed by dragons, and careering through air at the rate of a
+thousand leagues a minute.  No such thing; the vehicle that was sent
+to aid her was one of a much more vulgar description.
+
+The "Liverpool carryvan," then, which in the year 1706 used to
+perform the journey between London and that place in ten days, left
+Birmingham about an hour after Mrs. Catherine had quitted that town;
+and as she sat weeping on a hillside, and plunged in bitter
+meditation, the lumbering, jingling vehicle overtook her.  The
+coachman was marching by the side of his horses, and encouraging
+them to maintain their pace of two miles an hour; the passengers had
+some of them left the vehicle, in order to walk up the hill; and the
+carriage had arrived at the top of it, and, meditating a brisk trot
+down the declivity, waited there until the lagging passengers should
+arrive:  when Jehu, casting a good-natured glance upon Mrs.
+Catherine, asked the pretty maid whence she was come, and whether
+she would like a ride in his carriage.  To the latter of which
+questions Mrs. Catherine replied truly yes; to the former, her
+answer was that she had come from Stratford; whereas, as we very
+well know, she had lately quitted Birmingham.
+
+"Hast thee seen a woman pass this way, on a black horse, with a
+large bag of goold over the saddle?" said Jehu, preparing to mount
+upon the roof of his coach.
+
+"No, indeed," said Mrs. Cat.
+
+"Nor a trooper on another horse after her--no?  Well, there be a
+mortal row down Birmingham way about sich a one.  She have killed,
+they say, nine gentlemen at supper, and have strangled a German
+prince in bed.  She have robbed him of twenty thousand guineas, and
+have rode away on a black horse."
+
+"That can't be I," said Mrs. Cat, naively, "for I have but three
+shillings and a groat."
+
+"No, it can't be thee, truly, for where's your bag of goold? and,
+besides, thee hast got too pretty a face to do such wicked things as
+to kill nine gentlemen and strangle a German prince."
+
+"Law, coachman," said Mrs. Cat, blushing archly--",Law, coachman, DO
+you think so?"  The girl would have been pleased with a compliment
+even on her way to be hanged; and the parley ended by Mrs. Catherine
+stepping into the carriage, where there was room for eight people at
+least, and where two or three individuals had already taken their
+places.  For these Mrs. Catherine had in the first place to make a
+story, which she did; and a very glib one for a person of her years
+and education.  Being asked whither she was bound, and how she came
+to be alone of a morning sitting by a road-side, she invented a neat
+history suitable to the occasion, which elicited much interest from
+her fellow-passengers:  one in particular, a young man, who had
+caught a glimpse of her face under her hood, was very tender in his
+attentions to her.
+
+But whether it was that she had been too much fatigued by the
+occurrences of the past day and sleepless night, or whether the
+little laudanum which she had drunk a few hours previously now began
+to act upon her, certain it is that Mrs. Cat now suddenly grew sick,
+feverish, and extraordinarily sleepy; and in this state she
+continued for many hours, to the pity of all her fellow-travellers.
+At length the "carryvan" reached the inn, where horses and
+passengers were accustomed to rest for a few hours, and to dine; and
+Mrs. Catherine was somewhat awakened by the stir of the passengers,
+and the friendly voice of the inn-servant welcoming them to dinner.
+The gentleman who had been smitten by her beauty now urged her very
+politely to descend; which, taking the protection of his arm, she
+accordingly did.
+
+He made some very gallant speeches to her as she stepped out; and
+she must have been very much occupied by them, or wrapt up in her
+own thoughts, or stupefied by sleep, fever, and opium, for she did
+not take any heed of the place into which she was going:  which, had
+she done, she would probably have preferred remaining in the coach,
+dinnerless and ill.  Indeed, the inn into which she was about to
+make her entrance was no other than the "Bugle," from which she set
+forth at the commencement of this history; and which then, as now,
+was kept by her relative, the thrifty Mrs. Score.  That good
+landlady, seeing a lady, in a smart hood and cloak, leaning, as if
+faint, upon the arm of a gentleman of good appearance, concluded
+them to be man and wife, and folks of quality too; and with much
+discrimination, as well as sympathy, led them through the public
+kitchen to her own private parlour, or bar, where she handed the
+lady an armchair, and asked what she would like to drink.  By this
+time, and indeed at the very moment she heard her aunt's voice, Mrs.
+Catherine was aware of her situation; and when her companion
+retired, and the landlady, with much officiousness, insisted on
+removing her hood, she was quite prepared for the screech of
+surprise which Mrs. Score gave on dropping it, exclaiming, "Why, law
+bless us, it's our Catherine!"
+
+"I'm very ill, and tired, aunt," said Cat; "and would give the world
+for a few hours' sleep."
+
+"A few hours and welcome, my love, and a sack-posset too.  You do
+look sadly tired and poorly, sure enough.  Ah, Cat, Cat! you great
+ladies are sad rakes, I do believe.  I wager now, that with all your
+balls, and carriages, and fine clothes, you are neither so happy nor
+so well as when you lived with your poor old aunt, who used to love
+you so."  And with these gentle words, and an embrace or two, which
+Mrs. Catherine wondered at, and permitted, she was conducted to that
+very bed which the Count had occupied a year previously, and
+undressed, and laid in it, and affectionately tucked up by her aunt,
+who marvelled at the fineness of her clothes, as she removed them
+piece by piece; and when she saw that in Mrs. Catherine's pocket
+there was only the sum of three and fourpence, said, archly, "There
+was no need of money, for the Captain took care of that."
+
+Mrs. Cat did not undeceive her; and deceived Mrs. Score certainly
+was,--for she imagined the well-dressed gentleman who led Cat from
+the carriage was no other than the Count; and, as she had heard,
+from time to time, exaggerated reports of the splendour of the
+establishment which he kept up, she was induced to look upon her
+niece with the very highest respect, and to treat her as if she were
+a fine lady.  "And so she IS a fine lady," Mrs. Score had said
+months ago, when some of these flattering stories reached her, and
+she had overcome her first fury at Catherine's elopement.  "The girl
+was very cruel to leave me; but we must recollect that she is as
+good as married to a nobleman, and must all forget and forgive, you
+know."
+
+This speech had been made to Doctor Dobbs, who was in the habit of
+taking a pipe and a tankard at the "Bugle," and it had been roundly
+reprobated by the worthy divine; who told Mrs. Score, that the crime
+of Catherine was only the more heinous, if it had been committed
+from interested motives; and protested that, were she a princess, he
+would never speak to her again.  Mrs. Score thought and pronounced
+the Doctor's opinion to be very bigoted; indeed, she was one of
+those persons who have a marvellous respect for prosperity, and a
+corresponding scorn for ill-fortune.  When, therefore, she returned
+to the public room, she went graciously to the gentleman who had led
+Mrs. Catherine from the carriage, and with a knowing curtsey
+welcomed him to the "Bugle;" told him that his lady would not come
+to dinner, but bade her say, with her best love to his Lordship,
+that the ride had fatigued her, and that she would lie in bed for an
+hour or two.
+
+This speech was received with much wonder by his Lordship; who was,
+indeed, no other than a Liverpool tailor going to London to learn
+fashions; but he only smiled, and did not undeceive the landlady,
+who herself went off, smilingly, to bustle about dinner.
+
+The two or three hours allotted to that meal by the liberal
+coachmasters of those days passed away, and Mr. Coachman, declaring
+that his horses were now rested enough, and that they had twelve
+miles to ride, put the steeds to, and summoned the passengers.  Mrs.
+Score, who had seen with much satisfaction that her niece was really
+ill, and her fever more violent, and hoped to have her for many days
+an inmate in her house, now came forward, and casting upon the
+Liverpool tailor a look of profound but respectful melancholy, said,
+"My Lord (for I recollect your Lordship quite well), the lady
+upstairs is so ill, that it would be a sin to move her:  had I not
+better tell coachman to take down your Lordship's trunks, and the
+lady's, and make you a bed in the next room?"
+
+Very much to her surprise, this proposition was received with a roar
+of laughter.  "Madam," said the person addressed, "I'm not a lord,
+but a tailor and draper; and as for that young woman, before to-day
+I never set eyes on her."
+
+"WHAT!" screamed out Mrs. Score.  "Are not you the Count?  Do you
+mean to say that you a'n't Cat's--?  DO you mean to say that you
+didn't order her bed, and that you won't pay this here little bill?"
+And with this she produced a document, by which the Count's lady was
+made her debtor in a sum of half-a-guinea.
+
+These passionate words excited more and more laughter.  "Pay it, my
+Lord," said the coachman; "and then come along, for time presses."
+"Our respects to her Ladyship," said one passenger.  "Tell her my
+Lord can't wait," said another; and with much merriment one and all
+quitted the hotel, entered the coach, and rattled off.
+
+Dumb--pale with terror and rage--bill in hand, Mrs. Score had
+followed the company; but when the coach disappeared, her senses
+returned.  Back she flew into the inn, overturning the ostler, not
+deigning to answer Doctor Dobbs (who, from behind soft
+tobacco-fumes, mildly asked the reason of her disturbance), and,
+bounding upstairs like a fury, she rushed into the room where
+Catherine lay.
+
+"Well, madam!" said she, in her highest key, "do you mean that you
+have come into this here house to swindle me?  Do you dare for to
+come with your airs here, and call yourself a nobleman's lady, and
+sleep in the best bed, when you're no better nor a common tramper?
+I'll thank you, ma'am, to get out, ma'am.  I'll have no sick paupers
+in this house, ma'am.  You know your way to the workhouse, ma'am,
+and there I'll trouble you for to go."  And here Mrs. Score
+proceeded quickly to pull off the bedclothes; and poor Cat arose,
+shivering with fright and fever.
+
+She had no spirit to answer, as she would have done the day before,
+when an oath from any human being would have brought half-a-dozen
+from her in return; or a knife, or a plate, or a leg of mutton, if
+such had been to her hand.  She had no spirit left for such
+repartees; but in reply to the above words of Mrs. Score, and a
+great many more of the same kind--which are not necessary for our
+history, but which that lady uttered with inconceivable shrillness
+and volubility, the poor wench could say little,--only sob and
+shiver, and gather up the clothes again, crying, "Oh, aunt, don't
+speak unkind to me!  I'm very unhappy, and very ill!"
+
+"Ill, you strumpet! ill, be hanged!  Ill is as ill does; and if you
+are ill, it's only what you merit.  Get out! dress yourself--tramp!
+Get to the workhouse, and don't come to cheat me any more!  Dress
+yourself--do you hear?  Satin petticoat forsooth, and lace to her
+smock!"
+
+Poor, wretched, chattering, burning, shivering Catherine huddled on
+her clothes as well she might:  she seemed hardly to know or see
+what she was doing, and did not reply a single word to the many that
+the landlady let fall.  Cat tottered down the narrow stairs, and
+through the kitchen, and to the door; which she caught hold of, and
+paused awhile, and looked into Mrs. Score's face, as for one more
+chance.  "Get out, you nasty trull!" said that lady, sternly, with
+arms akimbo; and poor Catherine, with a most piteous scream and
+outgush of tears, let go of the door-post and staggered away into
+the road.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+"Why, no--yes--no--it is poor Catherine Hall, as I live!" said
+somebody, starting up, shoving aside Mrs. Score very rudely, and
+running into the road, wig off and pipe in hand.  It was honest
+Doctor Dobbs; and the result of his interview with Mrs. Cat was,
+that he gave up for ever smoking his pipe at the "Bugle;" and that
+she lay sick of a fever for some weeks in his house.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+Over this part of Mrs. Cat's history we shall be as brief as
+possible; for, to tell the truth, nothing immoral occurred during
+her whole stay at the good Doctor's house; and we are not going to
+insult the reader by offering him silly pictures of piety,
+cheerfulness, good sense, and simplicity; which are milk-and-water
+virtues after all, and have no relish with them like a good strong
+vice, highly peppered.  Well, to be short:  Doctor Dobbs, though a
+profound theologian, was a very simple gentleman; and before Mrs.
+Cat had been a month in the house, he had learned to look upon her
+as one of the most injured and repentant characters in the world;
+and had, with Mrs. Dobbs, resolved many plans for the future welfare
+of the young Magdalen.  "She was but sixteen, my love, recollect,"
+said the Doctor; "she was carried off, not by her own wish either.
+The Count swore he would marry her; and, though she did not leave
+him until that monster tried to poison her, yet think what a fine
+Christian spirit the poor girl has shown! she forgives him as
+heartily--more heartily, I am sure, than I do Mrs. Score for turning
+her adrift in that wicked way."  The reader will perceive some
+difference in the Doctor's statement and ours, which we assure him
+is the true one; but the fact is, the honest rector had had his tale
+from Mrs. Cat, and it was not in his nature to doubt, if she had
+told him a history ten times more wonderful.
+
+The reverend gentleman and his wife then laid their heads together;
+and, recollecting something of John Hayes's former attachment to
+Mrs. Cat, thought that it might be advantageously renewed, should
+Hayes be still constant.  Having very adroitly sounded Catherine (so
+adroitly, indeed, as to ask her "whether she would like to marry
+John Hayes?"), that young woman had replied, "No.  She had loved
+John Hayes--he had been her early, only love; but she was fallen
+now, and not good enough for him."  And this made the Dobbs family
+admire her more and more, and cast about for means to bring the
+marriage to pass.
+
+Hayes was away from the village when Mrs. Cat had arrived there; but
+he did not fail to hear of her illness, and how her aunt had
+deserted her, and the good Doctor taken her in.  The worthy Doctor
+himself met Mr. Hayes on the green; and, telling him that some
+repairs were wanting in his kitchen begged him to step in and
+examine them.  Hayes first said no, plump, and then no, gently; and
+then pished, and then psha'd; and then, trembling very much, went
+in:  and there sat Mrs. Catherine, trembling very much too.
+
+What passed between them?  If your Ladyship is anxious to know,
+think of that morning when Sir John himself popped the question.
+Could there be anything more stupid than the conversation which took
+place?  Such stuff is not worth repeating:  no, not when uttered by
+people in the very genteelest of company; as for the amorous
+dialogue of a carpenter and an ex-barmaid, it is worse still.
+Suffice it to say, that Mr. Hayes, who had had a year to recover
+from his passion, and had, to all appearances, quelled it, was over
+head and ears again the very moment he saw Mrs. Cat, and had all his
+work to do again.
+
+Whether the Doctor knew what was going on, I can't say; but this
+matter is certain, that every evening Hayes was now in the rectory
+kitchen, or else walking abroad with Mrs. Catherine:  and whether
+she ran away with him, or he with her, I shall not make it my
+business to inquire; but certainly at the end of three months (which
+must be crowded up into this one little sentence), another elopement
+took place in the village.  "I should have prevented it, certainly,"
+said Doctor Dobbs--whereat his wife smiled; "but the young people
+kept the matter a secret from me."  And so he would, had he known
+it; but though Mrs. Dobbs had made several attempts to acquaint him
+with the precise hour and method of the intended elopement, he
+peremptorily ordered her to hold her tongue.  The fact is, that the
+matter had been discussed by the rector's lady many times.  "Young
+Hayes," would she say "has a pretty little fortune and trade of his
+own; he is an only son, and may marry as he likes; and, though not
+specially handsome, generous, or amiable, has an undeniable love for
+Cat (who, you know, must not be particular), and the sooner she
+marries him, I think, the better.  They can't be married at our
+church you know, and--"  "Well," said the Doctor, "if they are
+married elsewhere, I can't help it, and know nothing about it, look
+you."  And upon this hint the elopement took place:  which, indeed,
+was peaceably performed early one Sunday morning about a month
+after; Mrs. Hall getting behind Mr. Hayes on a pillion, and all the
+children of the parsonage giggling behind the window-blinds to see
+the pair go off.
+
+During this month Mr. Hayes had caused the banns to be published at
+the town of Worcester; judging rightly that in a great town they
+would cause no such remark as in a solitary village, and thither he
+conducted his lady.  O ill-starred John Hayes! whither do the dark
+Fates lead you?  O foolish Doctor Dobbs, to forget that young people
+ought to honour their parents, and to yield to silly Mrs. Dobbs's
+ardent propensity for making matches!
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+The London Gazette of the 1st April, 1706, contains a proclamation
+by the Queen for putting into execution an Act of Parliament for the
+encouragement and increase of seamen, and for the better and
+speedier manning of Her Majesty's fleet, which authorises all
+justices to issue warrants to constables, petty constables,
+headboroughs, and tything-men, to enter and, if need be, to break
+open the doors of any houses where they shall believe deserting
+seamen to be; and for the further increase and encouragement of the
+navy, to take able-bodied landsmen when seamen fail.  This Act,
+which occupies four columns of the Gazette, and another of similar
+length and meaning for pressing men into the army, need not be
+quoted at length here; but caused a mighty stir throughout the
+kingdom at the time when it was in force.
+
+As one has seen or heard, after the march of a great army, a number
+of rogues and loose characters bring up the rear; in like manner, at
+the tail of a great measure of State, follow many roguish personal
+interests, which are protected by the main body.  The great measure
+of Reform, for instance, carried along with it much private jobbing
+and swindling--as could be shown were we not inclined to deal mildly
+with the Whigs; and this Enlistment Act, which, in order to maintain
+the British glories in Flanders, dealt most cruelly with the British
+people in England (it is not the first time that a man has been
+pinched at home to make a fine appearance abroad), created a great
+company of rascals and informers throughout the land, who lived upon
+it; or upon extortion from those who were subject to it, or not
+being subject to it were frightened into the belief that they were.
+
+When Mr. Hayes and his lady had gone through the marriage ceremony
+at Worcester, the former, concluding that at such a place lodging
+and food might be procured at a cheaper rate, looked about carefully
+for the meanest public-house in the town, where he might deposit his
+bride.
+
+In the kitchen of this inn, a party of men were drinking; and, as
+Mrs. Hayes declined, with a proper sense of her superiority, to eat
+in company with such low fellows, the landlady showed her and her
+husband to an inner apartment, where they might be served in
+private.
+
+The kitchen party seemed, indeed, not such as a lady would choose to
+join.  There was one huge lanky fellow, that looked like a soldier,
+and had a halberd; another was habited in a sailor's costume, with a
+fascinating patch over one eye; and a third, who seemed the leader
+of the gang, was a stout man in a sailor's frock and a horseman's
+jack-boots, whom one might fancy, if he were anything, to be a
+horse-marine.
+
+Of one of these worthies, Mrs. Hayes thought she knew the figure and
+voice; and she found her conjectures were true, when, all of sudden,
+three people, without "With your leave," or "By your leave," burst
+into the room, into which she and her spouse had retired.  At their
+head was no other than her old friend, Mr. Peter Brock; he had his
+sword drawn, and his finger to his lips, enjoining silence, as it
+were, to Mrs. Catherine.  He with the patch on his eye seized
+incontinently on Mr. Hayes; the tall man with the halberd kept the
+door; two or three heroes supported the one-eyed man; who, with a
+loud voice, exclaimed, "Down with your arms--no resistance! you are
+my prisoner, in the Queen's name!"
+
+And here, at this lock, we shall leave the whole company until the
+next chapter; which may possibly explain what they were.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.  CONTAINS MR. BROCK'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AND OTHER MATTERS.
+
+
+
+"You don't sure believe these men?" said Mrs. Hayes, as soon as the
+first alarm caused by the irruption of Mr. Brock and his companions
+had subsided.  "These are no magistrate's men:  it is but a trick to
+rob you of your money, John."
+
+"I will never give up a farthing of it!" screamed Hayes.
+
+"Yonder fellow," continued Mrs. Catherine, "I know, for all his
+drawn sword and fierce looks; his name is---"
+
+"Wood, madam, at your service!" said Mr. Brock.  "I am follower to
+Mr. Justice Gobble, of this town:  a'n't I, Tim?" said Mr. Brock to
+the tall halberdman who was keeping the door.
+
+"Yes indeed," said Tim, archly; "we're all followers of his honour
+Justice Gobble."
+
+"Certainly!" said the one-eyed man.
+
+"Of course!" cried the man in the nightcap.
+
+"I suppose, madam, you're satisfied NOW?" continued Mr. Brock, alias
+Wood.  "You can't deny the testimony of gentlemen like these; and
+our commission is to apprehend all able-bodied male persons who can
+give no good account of themselves, and enrol them in the service of
+Her Majesty.  Look at this Mr. Hayes" (who stood trembling in his
+shoes).  "Can there be a bolder, properer, straighter gentleman?
+We'll have him for a grenadier before the day's over!"
+
+"Take heart, John--don't be frightened.  Psha! I tell you I know the
+man" cried out Mrs. Hayes:  "he is only here to extort money."
+
+"Oh, for that matter, I DO think I recollect the lady.  Let me see;
+where was it?  At Birmingham, I think,--ay, at Birmingham,--about
+the time when they tried to murder Count Gal--"
+
+"Oh, sir!" here cried Madam Hayes, dropping her voice at once from a
+tone of scorn to one of gentlest entreaty, "what is it you want with
+my husband?  I know not, indeed, if ever I saw you before.  For what
+do you seize him?  How much will you take to release him, and let us
+go?  Name the sum; he is rich, and--"
+
+"RICH, Catherine!" cried Hayes.  "Rich!--O heavens! Sir, I have
+nothing but my hands to support me:  I am a poor carpenter, sir,
+working under my father!"
+
+"He can give twenty guineas to be free; I know he can!" said Mrs.
+Cat.
+
+"I have but a guinea to carry me home," sighed out Hayes.
+
+"But you have twenty at home, John," said his wife.  "Give these
+brave gentlemen a writing to your mother, and she will pay; and you
+will let us free then, gentlemen--won't you?"
+
+"When the money's paid, yes," said the leader, Mr. Brock.
+
+"Oh, in course," echoed the tall man with the halberd.  "What's a
+thrifling detintion, my dear?" continued he, addressing Hayes.
+"We'll amuse you in your absence, and drink to the health of your
+pretty wife here."
+
+This promise, to do the halberdier justice, he fulfilled.  He called
+upon the landlady to produce the desired liquor; and when Mr. Hayes
+flung himself at that lady's feet, demanding succour from her, and
+asking whether there was no law in the land--
+
+"There's no law at the 'Three Rooks' except THIS!" said Mr. Brock in
+reply, holding up a horse-pistol.  To which the hostess, grinning,
+assented, and silently went her way.
+
+After some further solicitations, John Hayes drew out the necessary
+letter to his father, stating that he was pressed, and would not be
+set free under a sum of twenty guineas; and that it would be of no
+use to detain the bearer of the letter, inasmuch as the gentlemen
+who had possession of him vowed that they would murder him should
+any harm befall their comrade.  As a further proof of the
+authenticity of the letter, a token was added:  a ring that Hayes
+wore, and that his mother had given him.
+
+The missives were, after some consultation, entrusted to the care of
+the tall halberdier, who seemed to rank as second in command of the
+forces that marched under Corporal Brock.  This gentleman was called
+indifferently Ensign, Mr., or even Captain Macshane; his intimates
+occasionally in sport called him Nosey, from the prominence of that
+feature in his countenance; or Spindleshins, for the very reason
+which brought on the first Edward a similar nickname.  Mr. Macshane
+then quitted Worcester, mounted on Hayes's horse; leaving all
+parties at the "Three Rooks" not a little anxious for his return.
+
+This was not to be expected until the next morning; and a weary nuit
+de noces did Mr. Hayes pass.  Dinner was served, and, according to
+promise, Mr. Brock and his two friends enjoyed the meal along with
+the bride and bridegroom.  Punch followed, and this was taken in
+company; then came supper.  Mr. Brock alone partook of this, the
+other two gentlemen preferring the society of their pipes and the
+landlady in the kitchen.
+
+"It is a sorry entertainment, I confess," said the ex-corporal, "and
+a dismal way for a gentleman to spend his bridal night; but somebody
+must stay with you, my dears:  for who knows but you might take a
+fancy to scream out of window, and then there would be murder, and
+the deuce and all to pay.  One of us must stay, and my friends love
+a pipe, so you must put up with my company until they can relieve
+guard."
+
+The reader will not, of course, expect that three people who were to
+pass the night, however unwillingly, together in an inn-room, should
+sit there dumb and moody, and without any personal communication; on
+the contrary, Mr. Brock, as an old soldier, entertained his
+prisoners with the utmost courtesy, and did all that lay in his
+power, by the help of liquor and conversation, to render their
+durance tolerable.  On the bridegroom his attentions were a good
+deal thrown away:  Mr. Hayes consented to drink copiously, but could
+not be made to talk much; and, in fact, the fright of the seizure,
+the fate hanging over him should his parents refuse a ransom, and
+the tremendous outlay of money which would take place should they
+accede to it, weighed altogether on his mind so much as utterly to
+unman it.
+
+As for Mrs. Cat, I don't think she was at all sorry in her heart to
+see the old Corporal:  for he had been a friend of old times--dear
+times to her; she had had from him, too, and felt for him, not a
+little kindness; and there was really a very tender, innocent
+friendship subsisting between this pair of rascals, who relished
+much a night's conversation together.
+
+The Corporal, after treating his prisoners to punch in great
+quantities, proposed the amusement of cards:  over which Mr. Hayes
+had not been occupied more than an hour, when he found himself so
+excessively sleepy as to be persuaded to fling himself down on the
+bed dressed as he was, and there to snore away until morning.
+
+Mrs. Catherine had no inclination for sleep; and the Corporal,
+equally wakeful, plied incessantly the bottle, and held with her a
+great deal of conversation.  The sleep, which was equivalent to the
+absence, of John Hayes took all restraint from their talk.  She
+explained to Brock the circumstances of her marriage, which we have
+already described; they wondered at the chance which had brought
+them together at the "Three Rooks;" nor did Brock at all hesitate to
+tell her at once that his calling was quite illegal, and that his
+intention was simply to extort money.  The worthy Corporal had not
+the slightest shame regarding his own profession, and cut many jokes
+with Mrs. Cat about her late one; her attempt to murder the Count,
+and her future prospects as a wife.
+
+And here, having brought him upon the scene again, we may as well
+shortly narrate some of the principal circumstances which befell him
+after his sudden departure from Birmingham; and which he narrated
+with much candour to Mrs. Catherine.
+
+He rode the Captain's horse to Oxford (having exchanged his military
+dress for a civil costume on the road), and at Oxford he disposed of
+"George of Denmark," a great bargain, to one of the heads of
+colleges.  As soon as Mr. Brock, who took on himself the style and
+title of Captain Wood, had sufficiently examined the curiosities of
+the University, he proceeded at once to the capital:  the only place
+for a gentleman of his fortune and figure.
+
+Here he read, with a great deal of philosophical indifference, in
+the Daily Post, the Courant, the Observator, the Gazette, and the
+chief journals of those days, which he made a point of examining at
+"Button's" and "Will's," an accurate description of his person, his
+clothes, and the horse he rode, and a promise of fifty guineas'
+reward to any person who would give an account of him (so that he
+might be captured) to Captain Count Galgenstein at Birmingham, to
+Mr. Murfey at the "Golden Ball" in the Savoy, or Mr. Bates at the
+"Blew Anchor in Pickadilly."  But Captain Wood, in an enormous
+full-bottomed periwig that cost him sixty pounds,* with high red
+heels to his shoes, a silver sword, and a gold snuff-box, and a
+large wound (obtained, he said, at the siege of Barcelona), which
+disfigured much of his countenance, and caused him to cover one eye,
+was in small danger, he thought, of being mistaken for Corporal
+Brock, the deserter of Cutts's; and strutted along the Mall with as
+grave an air as the very best nobleman who appeared there.  He was
+generally, indeed, voted to be very good company; and as his
+expenses were unlimited ("A few convent candlesticks," my dear, he
+used to whisper, "melt into a vast number of doubloons"), he
+commanded as good society as he chose to ask for:  and it was
+speedily known as a fact throughout town, that Captain Wood, who had
+served under His Majesty Charles III. of Spain, had carried off the
+diamond petticoat of Our Lady of Compostella, and lived upon the
+proceeds of the fraud.  People were good Protestants in those days,
+and many a one longed to have been his partner in the pious plunder.
+
+* In the ingenious contemporary history of Moll Flanders, a periwig
+is mentioned as costing that sum.
+
+All surmises concerning his wealth, Captain Wood, with much
+discretion, encouraged.  He contradicted no report, but was quite
+ready to confirm all; and when two different rumours were positively
+put to him, he used only to laugh, and say, "My dear sir, _I_ don't
+make the stories; but I'm not called upon to deny them; and I give
+you fair warning, that I shall assent to every one of them; so you
+may believe them or not, as you please."  And so he had the
+reputation of being a gentleman, not only wealthy, but discreet.  In
+truth, it was almost a pity that worthy Brock had not been a
+gentleman born; in which case, doubtless, he would have lived and
+died as became his station; for he spent his money like a gentleman,
+he loved women like a gentleman, he would fight like a gentleman, he
+gambled and got drunk like a gentleman.  What did he want else?
+Only a matter of six descents, a little money, and an estate, to
+render him the equal of St. John or Harley.  "Ah, those were merry
+days!" would Mr. Brock say,--for he loved, in a good old age, to
+recount the story of his London fashionable campaign;--"and when I
+think how near I was to become a great man, and to die perhaps a
+general, I can't but marvel at the wicked obstinacy of my ill-luck."
+
+"I will tell you what I did, my dear:  I had lodgings in Piccadilly,
+as if I were a lord; I had two large periwigs, and three suits of
+laced clothes; I kept a little black dressed out like a Turk; I
+walked daily in the Mall; I dined at the politest ordinary in Covent
+Garden; I frequented the best of coffee-houses, and knew all the
+pretty fellows of the town; I cracked a bottle with Mr. Addison, and
+lent many a piece to Dick Steele (a sad debauched rogue, my dear);
+and, above all, I'll tell you what I did--the noblest stroke that
+sure ever a gentleman performed in my situation.
+
+"One day, going into 'Will's,' I saw a crowd of gentlemen gathered
+together, and heard one of them say, 'Captain Wood! I don't know the
+man; but there was a Captain Wood in Southwell's regiment.' Egad, it
+was my Lord Peterborough himself who was talking about me.  So,
+putting off my hat, I made a most gracious conge to my Lord, and
+said I knew HIM, and rode behind him at Barcelona on our entry into
+that town.
+
+"'No doubt you did, Captain Wood,' says my Lord, taking my hand;
+'and no doubt you know me:  for many more know Tom Fool, than Tom
+Fool knows.'  And with this, at which all of us laughed, my Lord
+called for a bottle, and he and I sat down and drank it together.
+
+"Well, he was in disgrace, as you know, but he grew mighty fond of
+me, and--would you believe it?--nothing would satisfy him but
+presenting me at Court!  Yes, to Her Sacred Majesty the Queen, and
+my Lady Marlborough, who was in high feather.  Ay, truly, the
+sentinels on duty used to salute me as if I were Corporal John
+himself!  I was on the high road to fortune.  Charley Mordaunt used
+to call me Jack, and drink canary at my chambers; I used to make one
+at my Lord Treasurer's levee; I had even got Mr. Army-Secretary
+Walpole to take a hundred guineas as a compliment:  and he had
+promised me a majority:  when bad luck turned, and all my fine hopes
+were overthrown in a twinkling.
+
+"You see, my dear, that after we had left that gaby,
+Galgenstein,--ha, ha--with a gag in his mouth, and twopence-
+halfpenny in his pocket, the honest Count was in the sorriest plight
+in the world; owing money here and there to tradesmen, a cool
+thousand to the Warwickshire Squire:  and all this on eighty pounds
+a year!  Well, for a little time the tradesmen held their hands;
+while the jolly Count moved heaven and earth to catch hold of his
+dear Corporal and his dear money-bags over again, and placarded
+every town from London to Liverpool with descriptions of my pretty
+person.  The bird was flown, however,--the money clean gone,--and
+when there was no hope of regaining it, what did the creditors do
+but clap my gay gentleman into Shrewsbury gaol:  where I wish he had
+rotted, for my part.
+
+"But no such luck for honest Peter Brock, or Captain Wood, as he was
+in those days.  One blessed Monday I went to wait on Mr. Secretary,
+and he squeezed my hand and whispered to me that I was to be Major
+of a regiment in Virginia--the very thing:  for you see, my dear, I
+didn't care about joining my Lord Duke in Flanders; being pretty
+well known to the army there.  The Secretary squeezed my hand (it
+had a fifty-pound bill in it) and wished me joy, and called me
+Major, and bowed me out of his closet into the ante-room; and, as
+gay as may be, I went off to the 'Tilt-yard Coffee-house' in
+Whitehall, which is much frequented by gentlemen of our profession,
+where I bragged not a little of my good luck.
+
+"Amongst the company were several of my acquaintance, and amongst
+them a gentleman I did not much care to see, look you!  I saw a
+uniform that I knew--red and yellow facings--Cutts's, my dear; and
+the wearer of this was no other than his Excellency Gustavus
+Adolphus Maximilian, whom we all know of!
+
+"He stared me full in the face, right into my eye (t'other one was
+patched, you know), and after standing stock-still with his mouth
+open, gave a step back, and then a step forward, and then screeched
+out, 'It's Brock!'
+
+"'I beg your pardon, sir,' says I; 'did you speak to me?'
+
+"'I'll SWEAR it's Brock,' cries Gal, as soon as he hears my voice,
+and laid hold of my cuff (a pretty bit of Mechlin as ever you saw,
+by the way).
+
+"'Sirrah!' says I, drawing it back, and giving my Lord a little
+touch of the fist (just at the last button of the waistcoat, my
+dear,--a rare place if you wish to prevent a man from speaking too
+much:  it sent him reeling to the other end of the room). 'Ruffian!'
+says I.  'Dog!' says I.  'Insolent puppy and coxcomb! what do you
+mean by laying your hand on me?'
+
+"'Faith, Major, you giv him his BILLYFUL,' roared out a long Irish
+unattached ensign, that I had treated with many a glass of Nantz at
+the tavern.  And so, indeed, I had; for the wretch could not speak
+for some minutes, and all the officers stood laughing at him, as he
+writhed and wriggled hideously.
+
+"'Gentlemen, this is a monstrous scandal,' says one officer.  'Men
+of rank and honour at fists like a parcel of carters!'
+
+"'Men of honour!' says the Count, who had fetched up his breath by
+this time.  (I made for the door, but Macshane held me and said,
+'Major, you are not going to shirk him, sure?'  Whereupon I gripped
+his hand and vowed I would have the dog's life.)
+
+"'Men of honour!' says the Count.  'I tell you the man is a
+deserter, a thief, and a swindler!  He was my corporal, and ran away
+with a thou--'
+
+"'Dog, you lie!' I roared out, and made another cut at him with my
+cane; but the gentlemen rushed between us.
+
+"'O bluthanowns!' says honest Macshane, 'the lying scounthrel this
+fellow is!  Gentlemen, I swear be me honour that Captain Wood was
+wounded at Barcelona; and that I saw him there; and that he and I
+ran away together at the battle of Almanza, and bad luck to us.'
+
+"You see, my dear, that these Irish have the strongest imaginations
+in the world; and that I had actually persuaded poor Mac that he and
+I were friends in Spain.  Everybody knew Mac, who was a character in
+his way, and believed him.
+
+"'Strike a gentleman,' says I.  'I'll have your blood, I will.'
+
+"'This instant,' says the Count, who was boiling with fury;  'and
+where you like.'
+
+"'Montague House,' says I.  'Good,' says he.  And off we went.  In
+good time too, for the constables came in at the thought of such a
+disturbance, and wanted to take us in charge.
+
+"But the gentlemen present, being military men, would not hear of
+this.  Out came Mac's rapier, and that of half-a-dozen others; and
+the constables were then told to do their duty if they liked, or to
+take a crown-piece, and leave us to ourselves.  Off they went; and
+presently, in a couple of coaches, the Count and his friends, I and
+mine, drove off to the fields behind Montague House.  Oh that vile
+coffee-house! why did I enter it?
+
+"We came to the ground.  Honest Macshane was my second, and much
+disappointed because the second on the other side would not make a
+fight of it, and exchange a few passes with him; but he was an old
+major, a cool old hand, as brave as steel, and no fool.  Well, the
+swords are measured, Galgenstein strips off his doublet, and I my
+handsome cut-velvet in like fashion.  Galgenstein flings off his
+hat, and I handed mine over--the lace on it cost me twenty pounds.
+I longed to be at him, for--curse him!--I hate him, and know that he
+has no chance with me at sword's-play.
+
+"'You'll not fight in that periwig, sure?' says Macshane.  'Of
+course not,' says I, and took it off.
+
+"May all barbers be roasted in flames; may all periwigs, bobwigs,
+scratchwigs, and Ramillies cocks, frizzle in purgatory from this day
+forth to the end of time!  Mine was the ruin of me:  what might I
+not have been now but for that wig!
+
+"I gave it over to Ensign Macshane, and with it went what I had
+quite forgotten, the large patch which I wore over one eye, which
+popped out fierce, staring, and lively as was ever any eye in the
+world.
+
+"'Come on!' says I, and made a lunge at my Count; but he sprang back
+(the dog was as active as a hare, and knew, from old times, that I
+was his master with the small-sword), and his second, wondering,
+struck up my blade.
+
+"'I will not fight that man,' says he, looking mighty pale.  'I
+swear upon my honour that his name is Peter Brock:  he was for two
+years my corporal, and deserted, running away with a thousand pounds
+of my moneys.  Look at the fellow!  What is the matter with his eye?
+why did he wear a patch over it?  But stop!' says he.  'I have more
+proof.  Hand me my pocket-book.' And from it, sure enough, he
+produced the infernal proclamation announcing my desertion!  'See if
+the fellow has a scar across his left ear' (and I can't say, my
+dear, but what I have:  it was done by a cursed Dutchman at the
+Boyne).  'Tell me if he has not got C.R. in blue upon his right arm'
+(and there it is sure enough).  'Yonder swaggering Irishman may be
+his accomplice for what I know; but I will have no dealings with Mr.
+Brock, save with a constable for a second.'
+
+"'This is an odd story, Captain Wood,' said the old Major who acted
+for the Count.
+
+"'A scounthrelly falsehood regarding me and my friend!' shouted out
+Mr. Macshane; 'and the Count shall answer for it.'
+
+"'Stop, stop!' says the Major.  'Captain Wood is too gallant a
+gentleman, I am sure, not to satisfy the Count; and will show us
+that he has no such mark on his arm as only private soldiers put
+there.'
+
+"'Captain Wood,' says I, 'will do no such thing, Major.  I'll fight
+that scoundrel Galgenstein, or you, or any of you, like a man of
+honour; but I won't submit to be searched like a thief!'
+
+"'No, in coorse,' said Macshane.
+
+"'I must take my man off the ground,' says the Major.
+
+"'Well, take him, sir,' says I, in a rage; 'and just let me have the
+pleasure of telling him that he's a coward and a liar; and that my
+lodgings are in Piccadilly, where, if ever he finds courage to meet
+me, he may hear of me!'
+
+"'Faugh! I shpit on ye all,' cries my gallant ally Macshane.  And
+sure enough he kept his word, or all but--suiting the action to it
+at any rate.
+
+"And so we gathered up our clothes, and went back in our separate
+coaches, and no blood spilt.
+
+"'And is it thrue now,' said Mr. Macshane, when we were alone--'is
+it thrue now, all these divvles have been saying?'  'Ensign,' says
+I, 'you're a man of the world?'
+
+"''Deed and I am, and insign these twenty-two years.'
+
+"'Perhaps you'd like a few pieces?' says I.
+
+"'Faith and I should; for to tell you the secred thrut, I've not
+tasted mate these four days.'
+
+"'Well then, Ensign, it IS true,' says I; 'and as for meat, you
+shall have some at the first cook-shop.'  I bade the coach stop
+until he bought a plateful, which he ate in the carriage, for my
+time was precious.  I just told him the whole story:  at which he
+laughed, and swore that it was the best piece of GENERALSHIP he ever
+heard on.  When his belly was full, I took out a couple of guineas
+and gave them to him.  Mr. Macshane began to cry at this, and kissed
+me, and swore he never would desert me:  as, indeed, my dear, I
+don't think he will; for we have been the best of friends ever
+since, and he's the only man I ever could trust, I think.
+
+"I don't know what put it into my head, but I had a scent of some
+mischief in the wind; so stopped the coach a little before I got
+home, and, turning into a tavern, begged Macshane to go before me to
+my lodging, and see if the coast was clear:  which he did; and came
+back to me as pale as death, saying that the house was full of
+constables.  The cursed quarrel at the Tilt-yard had, I suppose, set
+the beaks upon me; and a pretty sweep they made of it.  Ah, my dear!
+five hundred pounds in money, five suits of laced clothes, three
+periwigs, besides laced shirts, swords, canes, and snuff-boxes; and
+all to go back to that scoundrel Count.
+
+"It was all over with me, I saw--no more being a gentleman for me;
+and if I remained to be caught, only a choice between Tyburn and a
+file of grenadiers.  My love, under such circumstances, a gentleman
+can't be particular, and must be prompt; the livery-stable was hard
+by where I used to hire my coach to go to Court,--ha! ha!--and was
+known as a man of substance.  Thither I went immediately.  'Mr.
+Warmmash,' says I, 'my gallant friend here and I have a mind for a
+ride and a supper at Twickenham, so you must lend us a pair of your
+best horses.'  Which he did in a twinkling, and off we rode.
+
+"We did not go into the Park, but turned off and cantered smartly up
+towards Kilburn; and, when we got into the country, galloped as if
+the devil were at our heels.  Bless you, my love, it was all done in
+a minute:  and the Ensign and I found ourselves regular knights of
+the road, before we knew where we were almost.  Only think of our
+finding you and your new husband at the 'Three Rooks'!  There's not
+a greater fence than the landlady in all the country.  It was she
+that put us on seizing your husband, and introduced us to the other
+two gentlemen, whose names I don't know any more than the dead."
+
+"And what became of the horses?" said Mrs. Catherine to Mr. Brock,
+when his tale was finished.
+
+"Rips, madam," said he; "mere rips.  We sold them at Stourbridge
+fair, and got but thirteen guineas for the two."
+
+"And--and--the Count, Max; where is he, Brock?" sighed she.
+
+"Whew!" whistled Mr. Brock.  "What, hankering after him still?  My
+dear, he is off to Flanders with his regiment; and, I make no doubt,
+there have been twenty Countesses of Galgenstein since your time."
+
+"I don't believe any such thing, sir," said Mrs. Catherine, starting
+up very angrily.
+
+"If you did, I suppose you'd laudanum him; wouldn't you?"
+
+"Leave the room, fellow," said the lady.  But she recollected
+herself speedily again; and, clasping her hands, and looking very
+wretched at Brock, at the ceiling, at the floor, at her husband
+(from whom she violently turned away her head), she began to cry
+piteously:  to which tears the Corporal set up a gentle
+accompaniment of whistling, as they trickled one after another down
+her nose.
+
+I don't think they were tears of repentance; but of regret for the
+time when she had her first love, and her fine clothes, and her
+white hat and blue feather.  Of the two, the Corporal's whistle was
+much more innocent than the girl's sobbing:  he was a rogue; but a
+good-natured old fellow when his humour was not crossed.  Surely our
+novel-writers make a great mistake in divesting their rascals of all
+gentle human qualities:  they have such--and the only sad point to
+think of is, in all private concerns of life, abstract feelings, and
+dealings with friends, and so on, how dreadfully like a rascal is to
+an honest man.  The man who murdered the Italian boy, set him first
+to play with his children whom he loved, and who doubtless deplored
+his loss.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.  ADVENTURES OF THE AMBASSADOR, MR. MACSHANE.
+
+
+
+If we had not been obliged to follow history in all respects, it is
+probable that we should have left out the last adventure of Mrs.
+Catherine and her husband, at the inn at Worcester, altogether; for,
+in truth, very little came of it, and it is not very romantic or
+striking.  But we are bound to stick closely, above all, by THE
+TRUTH--the truth, though it be not particularly pleasant to read of
+or to tell.  As anybody may read in the "Newgate Calendar," Mr. and
+Mrs. Hayes were taken at an inn at Worcester; were confined there;
+were swindled by persons who pretended to impress the bridegroom for
+military service.  What is one to do after that?  Had we been
+writing novels instead of authentic histories, we might have carried
+them anywhere else we chose:  and we had a great mind to make Hayes
+philosophising with Bolingbroke, like a certain Devereux; and Mrs.
+Catherine maitresse en titre to Mr. Alexander Pope, Doctor
+Sacheverel, Sir John Reade the oculist, Dean Swift, or Marshal
+Tallard; as the very commonest romancer would under such
+circumstances.  But alas and alas! truth must be spoken, whatever
+else is in the wind; and the excellent "Newgate Calendar," which
+contains the biographies and thanatographies of Hayes and his wife,
+does not say a word of their connections with any of the leading
+literary or military heroes of the time of Her Majesty Queen Anne.
+The "Calendar" says, in so many words, that Hayes was obliged to
+send to his father in Warwickshire for money to get him out of the
+scrape, and that the old gentleman came down to his aid.  By this
+truth must we stick; and not for the sake of the most brilliant
+episode,--no, not for a bribe of twenty extra guineas per sheet,
+would we depart from it.
+
+Mr. Brock's account of his adventure in London has given the reader
+some short notice of his friend, Mr Macshane.  Neither the wits nor
+the principles of that worthy Ensign were particularly firm:  for
+drink, poverty, and a crack on the skull at the battle of Steenkirk
+had served to injure the former; and the Ensign was not in his best
+days possessed of any share of the latter.  He had really, at one
+period, held such a rank in the army, but pawned his half-pay for
+drink and play; and for many years past had lived, one of the
+hundred thousand miracles of our city, upon nothing that anybody
+knew of, or of which he himself could give any account.  Who has not
+a catalogue of these men in his list? who can tell whence comes the
+occasional clean shirt, who supplies the continual means of
+drunkenness, who wards off the daily-impending starvation?  Their
+life is a wonder from day to day:  their breakfast a wonder; their
+dinner a miracle; their bed an interposition of Providence.  If you
+and I, my dear sir, want a shilling tomorrow, who will give it us?
+Will OUR butchers give us mutton-chops? will OUR laundresses clothe
+us in clean linen?--not a bone or a rag.  Standing as we do (may it
+be ever so) somewhat removed from want,* is there one of us who does
+not shudder at the thought of descending into the lists to combat
+with it, and expect anything but to be utterly crushed in the
+encounter?
+
+* The author, it must be remembered, has his lodgings and food
+provided for him by the government of his country.
+
+Not a bit of it, my dear sir.  It takes much more than you think for
+to starve a man.  Starvation is very little when you are used to it.
+Some people I know even, who live on it quite comfortably, and make
+their daily bread by it.  It had been our friend Macshane's sole
+profession for many years; and he did not fail to draw from it such
+a livelihood as was sufficient, and perhaps too good, for him.  He
+managed to dine upon it a certain or rather uncertain number of days
+in the week, to sleep somewhere, and to get drunk at least three
+hundred times a year.  He was known to one or two noblemen who
+occasionally helped him with a few pieces, and whom he helped in
+turn--never mind how.  He had other acquaintances whom he pestered
+undauntedly; and from whom he occasionally extracted a dinner, or a
+crown, or mayhap, by mistake, a goldheaded cane, which found its way
+to the pawnbroker's.  When flush of cash, he would appear at the
+coffee-house; when low in funds, the deuce knows into what mystic
+caves and dens he slunk for food and lodging.  He was perfectly
+ready with his sword, and when sober, or better still, a very little
+tipsy, was a complete master of it; in the art of boasting and lying
+he had hardly any equals; in shoes he stood six feet five inches;
+and here is his complete signalement.  It was a fact that he had
+been in Spain as a volunteer, where he had shown some gallantry, had
+had a brain-fever, and was sent home to starve as before.
+
+Mr. Macshane had, however, like Mr. Conrad, the Corsair, one virtue
+in the midst of a thousand crimes,--he was faithful to his employer
+for the time being:  and a story is told of him, which may or may
+not be to his credit, viz. that being hired on one occasion by a
+certain lord to inflict a punishment upon a roturier who had crossed
+his lordship in his amours, he, Macshane, did actually refuse from
+the person to be belaboured, and who entreated his forbearance, a
+larger sum of money than the nobleman gave him for the beating;
+which he performed punctually, as bound in honour and friendship.
+This tale would the Ensign himself relate, with much
+self-satisfaction; and when, after the sudden flight from London, he
+and Brock took to their roving occupation, he cheerfully submitted
+to the latter as his commanding officer, called him always Major,
+and, bating blunders and drunkenness, was perfectly true to his
+leader.  He had a notion--and, indeed, I don't know that it was a
+wrong one--that his profession was now, as before, strictly
+military, and according to the rules of honour.  Robbing he called
+plundering the enemy; and hanging was, in his idea, a dastardly and
+cruel advantage that the latter took, and that called for the
+sternest reprisals.
+
+The other gentlemen concerned were strangers to Mr. Brock, who felt
+little inclined to trust either of them upon such a message, or with
+such a large sum to bring back.  They had, strange to say, a similar
+mistrust on their side; but Mr. Brock lugged out five guineas, which
+he placed in the landlady's hand as security for his comrade's
+return; and Ensign Macshane, being mounted on poor Hayes's own
+horse, set off to visit the parents of that unhappy young man.  It
+was a gallant sight to behold our thieves' ambassador, in a faded
+sky-blue suit with orange facings, in a pair of huge jack-boots
+unconscious of blacking, with a mighty basket-hilted sword by his
+side, and a little shabby beaver cocked over a large tow-periwig,
+ride out from the inn of the "Three Rooks" on his mission to Hayes's
+paternal village.
+
+It was eighteen miles distant from Worcester; but Mr. Macshane
+performed the distance in safety, and in sobriety moreover (for such
+had been his instructions), and had no difficulty in discovering the
+house of old Hayes:  towards which, indeed, John's horse trotted
+incontinently.  Mrs. Hayes, who was knitting at the house-door, was
+not a little surprised at the appearance of the well-known grey
+gelding, and of the stranger mounted upon it.
+
+Flinging himself off the steed with much agility, Mr. Macshane, as
+soon as his feet reached the ground, brought them rapidly together,
+in order to make a profound and elegant bow to Mrs. Hayes; and
+slapping his greasy beaver against his heart, and poking his periwig
+almost into the nose of the old lady, demanded whether he had the
+"shooprame honour of adthressing Misthriss Hees?"
+
+Having been answered in the affirmative, he then proceeded to ask
+whether there was a blackguard boy in the house who would take "the
+horse to the steeble;" whether "he could have a dthrink of
+small-beer or buthermilk, being, faith, uncommon dthry;" and
+whether, finally, "he could be feevored with a few minutes' private
+conversation with her and Mr. Hees, on a matther of consitherable
+impartance."  All these preliminaries were to be complied with
+before Mr. Macshane would enter at all into the subject of his
+visit.  The horse and man were cared for; Mr. Hayes was called in;
+and not a little anxious did Mrs. Hayes grow, in the meanwhile, with
+regard to the fate of her darling son.  "Where is he?  How is he?
+Is he dead?" said the old lady.  "Oh yes, I'm sure he's dead !"
+
+"Indeed, madam, and you're misteeken intirely:  the young man is
+perfectly well in health."
+
+"Oh, praised be Heaven!"
+
+"But mighty cast down in sperrits.  To misfortunes, madam, look you,
+the best of us are subject; and a trifling one has fell upon your
+son."
+
+And herewith Mr. Macshane produced a letter in the handwriting of
+young Hayes, of which we have had the good luck to procure a copy.
+It ran thus:--
+
+"HONORED FATHER AND MOTHER,--The bearer of this is a kind gentleman,
+who has left me in a great deal of trouble.  Yesterday, at this
+towne, I fell in with some gentlemen of the queene's servas; after
+drinking with whom, I accepted her Majesty's mony to enliste.
+Repenting thereof, I did endeavour to escape; and, in so doing, had
+the misfortune to strike my superior officer, whereby I made myself
+liable to Death, according to the rules of warr.  If, however, I pay
+twenty ginnys, all will be wel.  You must give the same to the
+barer, els I shall be shott without fail on Tewsday morning.  And so
+no more from your loving son,
+
+                                               "JOHN HAYES.
+
+"From my prison at Bristol, this unhappy Monday."
+
+When Mrs. Hayes read this pathetic missive, its success with her was
+complete, and she was for going immediately to the cupboard, and
+producing the money necessary for her darling son's release.  But
+the carpenter Hayes was much more suspicious.  "I don't know you,
+sir," said he to the ambassador.
+
+"Do you doubt my honour, sir?" said the Ensign, very fiercely.
+
+"Why, sir," replied Mr. Hayes "I know little about it one way or
+other, but shall take it for granted, if you will explain a little
+more of this business."
+
+"I sildom condescind to explean," said Mr. Macshane, "for it's not
+the custom in my rank; but I'll explean anything in reason."
+
+"Pray, will you tell me in what regiment my son is enlisted?"
+
+"In coorse.  In Colonel Wood's fut, my dear; and a gallant corps it
+is as any in the army."
+
+"And you left him?"
+
+"On me soul, only three hours ago, having rid like a horse-jockey
+ever since; as in the sacred cause of humanity, curse me, every man
+should."
+
+As Hayes's house was seventy miles from Bristol, the old gentleman
+thought this was marvellous quick riding, and so, cut the
+conversation short.  "You have said quite enough, sir," said he, "to
+show me there is some roguery in the matter, and that the whole
+story is false from beginning to end."
+
+At this abrupt charge the Ensign looked somewhat puzzled, and then
+spoke with much gravity.  "Roguery," said he, "Misthur Hees, is a
+sthrong term; and which, in consideration of my friendship for your
+family, I shall pass over.  You doubt your son's honour, as there
+wrote by him in black and white?"
+
+"You have forced him to write," said Mr. Hayes.
+
+"The sly old divvle's right," muttered Mr. Macshane, aside.  "Well,
+sir, to make a clean breast of it, he HAS been forced to write it.
+The story about the enlistment is a pretty fib, if you will, from
+beginning to end.  And what then, my dear?  Do you think your son's
+any better off for that?"
+
+"Oh, where is he?" screamed Mrs. Hayes, plumping down on her knees.
+"We WILL give him the money, won't we, John?"
+
+"I know you will, madam, when I tell you where he is.  He is in the
+hands of some gentlemen of my acquaintance, who are at war with the
+present government, and no more care about cutting a man's throat
+than they do a chicken's.  He is a prisoner, madam, of our sword and
+spear.  If you choose to ransom him, well and good; if not, peace be
+with him! for never more shall you see him."
+
+"And how do I know you won't come back to-morrow for more money?"
+asked Mr. Hayes.
+
+"Sir, you have my honour; and I'd as lieve break my neck as my
+word," said Mr. Macshane, gravely.  "Twenty guineas is the bargain.
+Take ten minutes to talk of it--take it then, or leave it; it's all
+the same to me, my dear."  And it must be said of our friend the
+Ensign, that he meant every word he said, and that he considered the
+embassy on which he had come as perfectly honourable and regular.
+
+"And pray, what prevents us," said Mr. Hayes, starting up in a rage,
+"from taking hold of you, as a surety for him?"
+
+"You wouldn't fire on a flag of truce, would ye, you dishonourable
+ould civilian?" replied Mr. Macshane.  "Besides," says he, "there's
+more reasons to prevent you:  the first is this," pointing to his
+sword; "here are two more"--and these were pistols; "and the last
+and the best of all is, that you might hang me and dthraw me and
+quarther me, an yet never see so much as the tip of your son's nose
+again.  Look you, sir, we run mighty risks in our profession--it's
+not all play, I can tell you.  We're obliged to be punctual, too, or
+it's all up with the thrade.  If I promise that your son will die as
+sure as fate to-morrow morning, unless I return home safe, our
+people MUST keep my promise; or else what chance is there for me?
+You would be down upon me in a moment with a posse of constables,
+and have me swinging before Warwick gaol.  Pooh, my dear! you never
+would sacrifice a darling boy like John Hayes, let alone his lady,
+for the sake of my long carcass.  One or two of our gentlemen have
+been taken that way already, because parents and guardians would not
+believe them."
+
+"AND WHAT BECAME OF THE POOR CHILDREN?" said Mrs. Hayes, who began
+to perceive the gist of the argument, and to grow dreadfully
+frightened.
+
+"Don't let's talk of them, ma'am:  humanity shudthers at the
+thought!"  And herewith Mr. Macshane drew his finger across his
+throat in such a dreadful way as to make the two parents tremble.
+"It's the way of war, madam, look you.  The service I have the
+honour to belong to is not paid by the Queen; and so we're obliged
+to make our prisoners pay, according to established military
+practice."
+
+No lawyer could have argued his case better than Mr. Macshane so
+far; and he completely succeeded in convincing Mr. and Mrs. Hayes of
+the necessity of ransoming their son.  Promising that the young man
+should be restored to them next morning, along with his beautiful
+lady, he courteously took leave of the old couple, and made the best
+of his way back to Worcester again.  The elder Hayes wondered who
+the lady could be of whom the ambassador had spoken, for their son's
+elopement was altogether unknown to them; but anger or doubt about
+this subject was overwhelmed by their fears for their darling John's
+safety.  Away rode the gallant Macshane with the money necessary to
+effect this; and it must be mentioned, as highly to his credit, that
+he never once thought of appropriating the sum to himself, or of
+deserting his comrades in any way.
+
+His ride from Worcester had been a long one.  He had left that city
+at noon, but before his return thither the sun had gone down; and
+the landscape, which had been dressed like a prodigal, in purple and
+gold, now appeared like a Quaker, in dusky grey; and the trees by
+the road-side grew black as undertakers or physicians, and, bending
+their solemn heads to each other, whispered ominously among
+themselves; and the mists hung on the common; and the cottage lights
+went out one by one; and the earth and heaven grew black, but for
+some twinkling useless stars, which freckled the ebon countenance of
+the latter; and the air grew colder; and about two o'clock the moon
+appeared, a dismal pale-faced rake, walking solitary through the
+deserted sky; and about four, mayhap, the Dawn (wretched
+'prentice-boy!) opened in the east the shutters of the Day:--in
+other words, more than a dozen hours had passed.  Corporal Brock had
+been relieved by Mr. Redcap, the latter by Mr. Sicklop, the one-eyed
+gentleman; Mrs. John Hayes, in spite of her sorrows and bashfulness,
+had followed the example of her husband, and fallen asleep by his
+side--slept for many hours--and awakened still under the
+guardianship of Mr. Brock's troop; and all parties began anxiously
+to expect the return of the ambassador, Mr. Macshane.
+
+That officer, who had performed the first part of his journey with
+such distinguished prudence and success, found the night, on his
+journey homewards, was growing mighty cold and dark; and as he was
+thirsty and hungry, had money in his purse, and saw no cause to
+hurry, he determined to take refuge at an alehouse for the night,
+and to make for Worcester by dawn the next morning.  He accordingly
+alighted at the first inn on his road, consigned his horse to the
+stable, and, entering the kitchen, called for the best liquor in the
+house.
+
+A small company was assembled at the inn, among whom Mr. Macshane
+took his place with a great deal of dignity; and, having a
+considerable sum of money in his pocket, felt a mighty contempt for
+his society, and soon let them know the contempt he felt for them.
+After a third flagon of ale, he discovered that the liquor was sour,
+and emptied, with much spluttering and grimaces, the remainder of
+the beer into the fire.  This process so offended the parson of the
+parish (who in those good old times did not disdain to take the post
+of honour in the chimney-nook), that he left his corner, looking
+wrathfully at the offender; who without any more ado instantly
+occupied it.  It was a fine thing to hear the jingling of the twenty
+pieces in his pocket, the oaths which he distributed between the
+landlord, the guests, and the liquor--to remark the sprawl of his
+mighty jack-boots, before the sweep of which the timid guests edged
+farther and farther away; and the languishing leers which he cast on
+the landlady, as with wide-spread arms he attempted to seize upon
+her.
+
+When the ostler had done his duties in the stable, he entered the
+inn, and whispered the landlord that "the stranger was riding John
+Hayes's horse:" of which fact the host soon convinced himself, and
+did not fail to have some suspicions of his guest.  Had he not
+thought that times were unquiet, horses might be sold, and one man's
+money was as good as another's, he probably would have arrested the
+Ensign immediately, and so lost all the profit of the score which
+the latter was causing every moment to be enlarged.
+
+In a couple of hours, with that happy facility which one may have
+often remarked in men of the gallant Ensign's nation, he had managed
+to disgust every one of the landlord's other guests, and scare them
+from the kitchen.  Frightened by his addresses, the landlady too had
+taken flight; and the host was the only person left in the
+apartment; who there stayed for interest's sake merely, and listened
+moodily to his tipsy guest's conversation.  In an hour more, the
+whole house was awakened by a violent noise of howling, curses, and
+pots clattering to and fro.  Forth issued Mrs. Landlady in her
+night-gear, out came John Ostler with his pitchfork, downstairs
+tumbled Mrs. Cook and one or two guests, and found the landlord and
+ensign on the kitchen-floor--the wig of the latter lying, much
+singed and emitting strange odours, in the fireplace, his face
+hideously distorted, and a great quantity of his natural hair in the
+partial occupation of the landlord; who had drawn it and the head
+down towards him, in order that he might have the benefit of
+pummelling the latter more at his ease.  In revenge, the landlord
+was undermost, and the Ensign's arms were working up and down his
+face and body like the flaps of a paddle-wheel:  the man of war had
+clearly the best of it.
+
+The combatants were separated as soon as possible; but, as soon as
+the excitement of the fight was over, Ensign Macshane was found to
+have no further powers of speech, sense, or locomotion, and was
+carried by his late antagonist to bed.  His sword and pistols, which
+had been placed at his side at the commencement of the evening, were
+carefully put by, and his pocket visited.  Twenty guineas in gold, a
+large knife--used, probably, for the cutting of
+bread-and-cheese--some crumbs of those delicacies and a paper of
+tobacco found in the breeches-pockets, and in the bosom of the
+sky-blue coat, the leg of a cold fowl and half of a raw onion,
+constituted his whole property.
+
+These articles were not very suspicious; but the beating which the
+landlord had received tended greatly to confirm his own and his
+wife's doubts about their guest; and it was determined to send off
+in the early morning to Mr. Hayes, informing him how a person had
+lain at their inn who had ridden thither mounted upon young Hayes's
+horse.  Off set John Ostler at earliest dawn; but on his way he woke
+up Mr. Justice's clerk, and communicated his suspicions to him; and
+Mr. Clerk consulted with the village baker, who was always up early;
+and the clerk, the baker, the butcher with his cleaver, and two
+gentlemen who were going to work, all adjourned to the inn.
+
+Accordingly, when Ensign Macshane was in a truckle-bed, plunged in
+that deep slumber which only innocence and drunkenness enjoy in this
+world, and charming the ears of morn by the regular and melodious
+music of his nose, a vile plot was laid against him; and when about
+seven of the clock he woke, he found, on sitting up in his bed,
+three gentlemen on each side of it, armed, and looking ominous.  One
+held a constable's staff, and albeit unprovided with a warrant,
+would take upon himself the responsibility of seizing Mr. Macshane
+and of carrying him before his worship at the hall.
+
+"Taranouns, man!" said the Ensign, springing up in bed, and abruptly
+breaking off a loud sonorous yawn, with which he had opened the
+business of the day, "you won't deteen a gentleman who's on life and
+death?  I give ye my word, an affair of honour."
+
+"How came you by that there horse?" said the baker.
+
+"How came you by these here fifteen guineas?" said the landlord, in
+whose hands, by some process, five of the gold pieces had
+disappeared.
+
+"What is this here idolatrous string of beads?" said the clerk.
+
+Mr. Macshane, the fact is, was a Catholic, but did not care to own
+it:  for in those days his religion was not popular.
+
+"Baids?  Holy Mother of saints! give me back them baids," said Mr.
+Macshane, clasping his hands.  "They were blest, I tell you, by his
+holiness the po--psha!  I mane they belong to a darling little
+daughter I had that's in heaven now:  and as for the money and the
+horse, I should like to know how a gentleman is to travel in this
+counthry without them."
+
+"Why, you see, he may travel in the country to GIT 'em," here
+shrewdly remarked the constable; "and it's our belief that neither
+horse nor money is honestly come by.  If his worship is satisfied,
+why so, in course, shall we be; but there is highwaymen abroad, look
+you; and, to our notion, you have very much the cut of one."
+
+Further remonstrances or threats on the part of Mr. Macshane were
+useless.  Although he vowed that he was first cousin to the Duke of
+Leinster, an officer in Her Majesty's service, and the dearest
+friend Lord Marlborough had, his impudent captors would not believe
+a word of his statement (which, further, was garnished with a
+tremendous number of oaths); and he was, about eight o'clock,
+carried up to the house of Squire Ballance, the neighbouring justice
+of the peace.
+
+When the worthy magistrate asked the crime of which the prisoner had
+been guilty, the captors looked somewhat puzzled for the moment;
+since, in truth, it could not be shown that the Ensign had committed
+any crime at all; and if he had confined himself to simple silence,
+and thrown upon them the onus of proving his misdemeanours, Justice
+Ballance must have let him loose, and soundly rated his clerk and
+the landlord for detaining an honest gentleman on so frivolous a
+charge.
+
+But this caution was not in the Ensign's disposition; and though his
+accusers produced no satisfactory charge against him, his own words
+were quite enough to show how suspicious his character was.  When
+asked his name, he gave it in as Captain Geraldine, on his way to
+Ireland, by Bristol, on a visit to his cousin the Duke of Leinster.
+He swore solemnly that his friends, the Duke of Marlborough and Lord
+Peterborough, under both of whom he had served, should hear of the
+manner in which he had been treated; and when the justice,--a sly
+old gentleman, and one that read the Gazettes, asked him at what
+battles he had been present, the gallant Ensign pitched on a couple
+in Spain and in Flanders, which had been fought within a week of
+each other, and vowed that he had been desperately wounded at both;
+so that, at the end of his examination, which had been taken down by
+the clerk, he had been made to acknowledge as follows:--Captain
+Geraldine, six feet four inches in height; thin, with a very long
+red nose, and red hair; grey eyes, and speaks with a strong Irish
+accent; is the first-cousin of the Duke of Leinster, and in constant
+communication with him:  does not know whether his Grace has any
+children; does not know whereabouts he lives in London; cannot say
+what sort of a looking man his Grace is:  is acquainted with the
+Duke of Marlborough, and served in the dragoons at the battle of
+Ramillies; at which time he was with my Lord Peterborough before
+Barcelona.  Borrowed the horse which he rides from a friend in
+London, three weeks since.  Peter Hobbs, ostler, swears that it was
+in his master's stable four days ago, and is the property of John
+Hayes, carpenter.  Cannot account for the fifteen guineas found on
+him by the landlord; says there were twenty; says he won them at
+cards, a fortnight since, at Edinburgh; says he is riding about the
+country for his amusement:  afterwards says he is on a matter of
+life and death, and going to Bristol; declared last night, in the
+hearing of several witnesses, that he was going to York; says he is
+a man of independent property, and has large estates in Ireland, and
+a hundred thousand pounds in the Bank of England.  Has no shirt or
+stockings, and the coat he wears is marked "S.S."  In his boots is
+written "Thomas Rodgers," and in his hat is the name of the "Rev.
+Doctor Snoffler."
+
+Doctor Snoffler lived at Worcester, and had lately advertised in the
+Hue and Cry a number of articles taken from his house.  Mr. Macshane
+said, in reply to this, that his hat had been changed at the inn,
+and he was ready to take his oath that he came thither in a
+gold-laced one.  But this fact was disproved by the oaths of many
+persons who had seen him at the inn.  And he was about to be
+imprisoned for the thefts which he had not committed (the fact about
+the hat being, that he had purchased it from a gentleman at the
+"Three Rooks" for two pints of beer)--he was about to be remanded,
+when, behold, Mrs. Hayes the elder made her appearance; and to her
+it was that the Ensign was indebted for his freedom.
+
+Old Hayes had gone to work before the ostler arrived; but when his
+wife heard the lad's message, she instantly caused her pillion to be
+placed behind the saddle, and mounting the grey horse, urged the
+stable-boy to gallop as hard as ever he could to the justice's
+house.
+
+She entered panting and alarmed.  "Oh, what is your honour going to
+do to this honest gentleman?" said she.  "In the name of Heaven, let
+him go! His time is precious--he has important business--business of
+life and death."
+
+"I tould the jidge so," said the Ensign, "but he refused to take my
+word--the sacred wurrd of honour of Captain Geraldine."
+
+Macshane was good at a single lie, though easily flustered on an
+examination; and this was a very creditable stratagem to acquaint
+Mrs. Hayes with the name that he bore.
+
+"What! you know Captain Geraldine?" said Mr. Ballance, who was
+perfectly well acquainted with the carpenter's wife.
+
+"In coorse she does.  Hasn't she known me these tin years?  Are we
+not related?  Didn't she give me the very horse which I rode, and,
+to make belave, tould you I'd bought in London?"
+
+"Let her tell her own story.  Are you related to Captain Geraldine,
+Mrs. Hayes?"
+
+"Yes--oh, yes!"
+
+"A very elegant connection!  And you gave him the horse, did you, of
+your own free-will?"
+
+"Oh yes! of my own will--I would give him anything.  Do, do, your
+honour, let him go!  His child is dying," said the old lady,
+bursting into tears.  "It may be dead before he gets to--before he
+gets there.  Oh, your honour, your honour, pray, pray, don't detain
+him!"
+
+The justice did not seem to understand this excessive sympathy on
+the part of Mrs. Hayes; nor did the father himself appear to be
+nearly so affected by his child's probable fate as the honest woman
+who interested herself for him.  On the contrary, when she made this
+passionate speech, Captain Geraldine only grinned, and said, "Niver
+mind, my dear.  If his honour will keep an honest gentleman for
+doing nothing, why, let him--the law must settle between us; and as
+for the child, poor thing, the Lord deliver it!"
+
+At this, Mrs. Hayes fell to entreating more loudly than ever; and as
+there was really no charge against him, Mr. Ballance was constrained
+to let him go.
+
+The landlord and his friends were making off, rather confused, when
+Ensign Macshane called upon the former in a thundering voice to
+stop, and refund the five guineas which he had stolen from him.
+Again the host swore there were but fifteen in his pocket.  But
+when, on the Bible, the Ensign solemnly vowed that he had twenty,
+and called upon Mrs. Hayes to say whether yesterday, half-an-hour
+before he entered the inn, she had not seen him with twenty guineas,
+and that lady expressed herself ready to swear that she had, Mr.
+Landlord looked more crestfallen than ever, and said that he had not
+counted the money when he took it; and though he did in his soul
+believe that there were only fifteen guineas, rather than be
+suspected of a shabby action, he would pay the five guineas out of
+his own pocket:  which he did, and with the Ensign's, or rather Mrs.
+Hayes's, own coin.
+
+As soon as they were out of the justice's house, Mr. Macshane, in
+the fulness of his gratitude, could not help bestowing an embrace
+upon Mrs. Hayes.  And when she implored him to let her ride behind
+him to her darling son, he yielded with a very good grace, and off
+the pair set on John Hayes's grey.
+
+"Who has Nosey brought with him now?" said Mr. Sicklop, Brock's
+one-eyed confederate, who, about three hours after the above
+adventure, was lolling in the yard of the "Three Rooks." It was our
+Ensign, with the mother of his captive.  They had not met with any
+accident in their ride.
+
+"I shall now have the shooprame bliss," said Mr. Macshane, with much
+feeling, as he lifted Mrs. Hayes from the saddle---"the shooprame
+bliss of intwining two harrts that are mead for one another.  Ours,
+my dear, is a dismal profession; but ah! don't moments like this
+make aminds for years of pain?  This way, my dear.  Turn to your
+right, then to your left--mind the stip--and the third door round
+the corner."
+
+All these precautions were attended to; and after giving his
+concerted knock, Mr. Macshane was admitted into an apartment, which
+he entered holding his gold pieces in the one hand, and a lady by
+the other.
+
+We shall not describe the meeting which took place between mother
+and son.  The old lady wept copiously; the young man was really glad
+to see his relative, for he deemed that his troubles were over.
+Mrs. Cat bit her lips, and stood aside, looking somewhat foolish;
+Mr. Brock counted the money; and Mr. Macshane took a large dose of
+strong waters, as a pleasing solace for his labours, dangers, and
+fatigue.
+
+When the maternal feelings were somewhat calmed, the old lady had
+leisure to look about her, and really felt a kind of friendship and
+goodwill for the company of thieves in which she found herself.  It
+seemed to her that they had conferred an actual favour on her, in
+robbing her of twenty guineas, threatening her son's life, and
+finally letting him go.
+
+"Who is that droll old gentleman?" said she; and being told that it
+was Captain Wood, she dropped him a curtsey, and said, with much
+respect, "Captain, your very humble servant;" which compliment Mr.
+Brock acknowledged by a gracious smile and bow.  "And who is this
+pretty young lady?" continued Mrs. Hayes.
+
+"Why--hum--oh--mother, you must give her your blessing.  She is Mrs.
+John Hayes."  And herewith Mr. Hayes brought forward his interesting
+lady, to introduce her to his mamma.
+
+The news did not at all please the old lady; who received Mrs.
+Catherine's embrace with a very sour face indeed.  However, the
+mischief was done; and she was too glad to get back her son to be,
+on such an occasion, very angry with him.  So, after a proper
+rebuke, she told Mrs. John Hayes that though she never approved of
+her son's attachment, and thought he married below his condition,
+yet as the evil was done, it was their duty to make the best of it;
+and she, for her part, would receive her into her house, and make
+her as comfortable there as she could.
+
+"I wonder whether she has any more money in that house?" whispered
+Mr. Sicklop to Mr. Redcap; who, with the landlady, had come to the
+door of the room, and had been amusing themselves by the
+contemplation of this sentimental scene.
+
+"What a fool that wild Hirishman was not to bleed her for more!"
+said the landlady; "but he's a poor ignorant Papist.  I'm sure my
+man" (this gentleman had been hanged), "wouldn't have come away with
+such a beggarly sum."
+
+"Suppose we have some more out of 'em?" said Mr. Redcap.  "What
+prevents us?  We have got the old mare, and the colt too,--ha! ha!--
+and the pair of 'em ought to be worth at least a hundred to us."
+
+This conversation was carried on sotto voce; and I don't know
+whether Mr. Brock had any notion of the plot which was arranged by
+the three worthies.  The landlady began it.  "Which punch, madam,
+will you take?" says she.  "You must have something for the good of
+the house, now you are in it."
+
+"In coorse," said the Ensign.
+
+"Certainly," said the other three.  But the old lady said she was
+anxious to leave the place; and putting down a crown-piece,
+requested the hostess to treat the gentlemen in her absence.
+"Good-bye, Captain," said the old lady.
+
+"Ajew!" cried the Ensign, "and long life to you, my dear.  You got
+me out of a scrape at the justice's yonder; and, split me! but
+Insign Macshane will remimber it as long as he lives."
+
+And now Hayes and the two ladies made for the door; but the landlady
+placed herself against it, and Mr. Sicklop said, "No, no, my pretty
+madams, you ain't a-going off so cheap as that neither; you are not
+going out for a beggarly twenty guineas, look you,--we must have
+more."
+
+Mr. Hayes starting back, and cursing his fate, fairly burst into
+tears; the two women screamed; and Mr. Brock looked as if the
+proposition both amused and had been expected by him:  but not so
+Ensign Macshane.
+
+"Major!" said he, clawing fiercely hold of Brock's arms.
+
+"Ensign," said Mr. Brock, smiling.
+
+"Arr we, or arr we not, men of honour?"
+
+"Oh, in coorse," said Brock, laughing, and using Macshane's
+favourite expression.
+
+"If we ARR men of honour, we are bound to stick to our word; and,
+hark ye, you dirty one-eyed scoundrel, if you don't immadiately make
+way for these leedies, and this lily-livered young jontleman who's
+crying so, the Meejor here and I will lug out and force you."  And
+so saying, he drew his great sword and made a pass at Mr. Sicklop;
+which that gentleman avoided, and which caused him and his companion
+to retreat from the door.  The landlady still kept her position at
+it, and with a storm of oaths against the Ensign, and against two
+Englishmen who ran away from a wild Hirishman, swore she would not
+budge a foot, and would stand there until her dying day.
+
+"Faith, then, needs must," said the Ensign, and made a lunge at the
+hostess, which passed so near the wretch's throat, that she
+screamed, sank on her knees, and at last opened the door.
+
+Down the stairs, then, with great state, Mr. Macshane led the elder
+lady, the married couple following; and having seen them to the
+street, took an affectionate farewell of the party, whom he vowed
+that he would come and see.  "You can walk the eighteen miles aisy,
+between this and nightfall," said he.
+
+"WALK!" exclaimed Mr. Hayes.  "Why, haven't we got Ball, and shall
+ride and tie all the way?"
+
+"Madam!" cried Macshane, in a stern voice, "honour before
+everything.  Did you not, in the presence of his worship, vow and
+declare that you gave me that horse, and now d'ye talk of taking it
+back again?  Let me tell you, madam, that such paltry thricks ill
+become a person of your years and respectability, and ought never to
+be played with Insign Timothy Macshane."
+
+He waved his hat and strutted down the street; and Mrs. Catherine
+Hayes, along with her bridegroom and mother-in-law, made the best of
+their way homeward on foot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.  WHICH EMBRACES A PERIOD OF SEVEN YEARS.
+
+
+
+The recovery of so considerable a portion of his property from the
+clutches of Brock was, as may be imagined, no trifling source of joy
+to that excellent young man, Count Gustavus Adolphus de Galgenstein;
+and he was often known to say, with much archness, and a proper
+feeling of gratitude to the Fate which had ordained things so, that
+the robbery was, in reality, one of the best things that could have
+happened to him:  for, in event of Mr. Brock's NOT stealing the
+money, his Excellency the Count would have had to pay the whole to
+the Warwickshire Squire, who had won it from him at play.  He was
+enabled, in the present instance, to plead his notorious poverty as
+an excuse; and the Warwickshire conqueror got off with nothing,
+except a very badly written autograph of the Count's, simply
+acknowledging the debt.
+
+This point his Excellency conceded with the greatest candour; but
+(as, doubtless, the reader may have remarked in the course of his
+experience) to owe is not quite the same thing as to pay; and from
+the day of his winning the money until the day of his death the
+Warwickshire Squire did never, by any chance, touch a single bob,
+tizzy, tester, moidore, maravedi, doubloon, tomaun, or rupee, of the
+sum which Monsieur de Galgenstein had lost to him.
+
+That young nobleman was, as Mr. Brock hinted in the little
+autobiographical sketch which we gave in a former chapter,
+incarcerated for a certain period, and for certain other debts, in
+the donjons of Shrewsbury; but he released himself from them by that
+noble and consolatory method of whitewashing which the law has
+provided for gentlemen in his oppressed condition; and he had not
+been a week in London, when he fell in with, and overcame, or put to
+flight, Captain Wood, alias Brock, and immediately seized upon the
+remainder of his property.  After receiving this, the Count, with
+commendable discretion, disappeared from England altogether for a
+while; nor are we at all authorised to state that any of his debts
+to his tradesmen were discharged, any more than his debts of honour,
+as they are pleasantly called.
+
+Having thus settled with his creditors, the gallant Count had
+interest enough with some of the great folk to procure for himself a
+post abroad, and was absent in Holland for some time.  It was here
+that he became acquainted with the lovely Madam Silverkoop, the
+widow of a deceased gentleman of Leyden; and although the lady was
+not at that age at which tender passions are usually inspired--being
+sixty--and though she could not, like Mademoiselle Ninon de
+l'Enclos, then at Paris, boast of charms which defied the progress
+of time,--for Mrs. Silverkoop was as red as a boiled lobster, and as
+unwieldy as a porpoise; and although her mental attractions did by
+no means make up for her personal deficiencies,--for she was
+jealous, violent, vulgar, drunken, and stingy to a miracle:  yet her
+charms had an immediate effect on Monsieur de Galgenstein; and
+hence, perhaps, the reader (the rogue! how well he knows the world!)
+will be led to conclude that the honest widow was RICH.
+
+Such, indeed, she was; and Count Gustavus, despising the difference
+between his twenty quarterings and her twenty thousand pounds, laid
+the most desperate siege to her, and finished by causing her to
+capitulate; as I do believe, after a reasonable degree of pressing,
+any woman will do to any man:  such, at least, has been MY
+experience in the matter.
+
+The Count then married; and it was curious to see how he--who, as we
+have seen in the case of Mrs. Cat, had been as great a tiger and
+domestic bully as any extant--now, by degrees, fell into a quiet
+submission towards his enormous Countess; who ordered him up and
+down as a lady orders her footman, who permitted him speedily not to
+have a will of his own, and who did not allow him a shilling of her
+money without receiving for the same an accurate account.
+
+How was it that he, the abject slave of Madam Silverkoop, had been
+victorious over Mrs. Cat?  The first blow is, I believe, the
+decisive one in these cases, and the Countess had stricken it a week
+after their marriage;--establishing a supremacy which the Count
+never afterwards attempted to question.
+
+We have alluded to his Excellency's marriage, as in duty bound,
+because it will be necessary to account for his appearance hereafter
+in a more splendid fashion than that under which he has hitherto
+been known to us; and just comforting the reader by the knowledge
+that the union, though prosperous in a worldly point of view, was,
+in reality, extremely unhappy, we must say no more from this time
+forth of the fat and legitimate Madam de Galgenstein.  Our darling
+is Mrs. Catherine, who had formerly acted in her stead; and only in
+so much as the fat Countess did influence in any way the destinies
+of our heroine, or those wise and virtuous persons who have appeared
+and are to follow her to her end, shall we in any degree allow her
+name to figure here.  It is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one
+sometimes does, when the time is past, of some little little wheel
+which works the whole mighty machinery of FATE, and see how our
+destinies turn on a minute's delay or advance, or on the turning of
+a street, or on somebody else's turning of a street, or on somebody
+else's doing of something else in Downing Street or in Timbuctoo,
+now or a thousand years ago.  Thus, for instance, if Miss Poots, in
+the year 1695, had never been the lovely inmate of a Spielhaus at
+Amsterdam, Mr. Van Silverkoop would never have seen her; if the day
+had not been extraordinarily hot, the worthy merchant would never
+have gone thither; if he had not been fond of Rhenish wine and
+sugar, he never would have called for any such delicacies; if he had
+not called for them, Miss Ottilia Poots would never have brought
+them, and partaken of them; if he had not been rich, she would
+certainly have rejected all the advances made to her by Silverkoop;
+if he had not been so fond of Rhenish and sugar, he never would have
+died; and Mrs. Silverkoop would have been neither rich nor a widow,
+nor a wife to Count von Galgenstein.  Nay, nor would this history
+have ever been written; for if Count Galgenstein had not married the
+rich widow, Mrs. Catherine would never have--
+
+Oh, my dear madam! you thought we were going to tell you.  Pooh!
+nonsense!--no such thing!  not for two or three and seventy pages or
+so,--when, perhaps, you MAY know what Mrs. Catherine never would
+have done.
+
+The reader will remember, in the second chapter of these Memoirs,
+the announcement that Mrs. Catherine had given to the world a child,
+who might bear, if he chose, the arms of Galgenstein, with the
+further adornment of a bar-sinister.  This child had been put out to
+nurse some time before its mother's elopement from the Count; and as
+that nobleman was in funds at the time (having had that success at
+play which we duly chronicled), he paid a sum of no less than twenty
+guineas, which was to be the yearly reward of the nurse into whose
+charge the boy was put.  The woman grew fond of the brat; and when,
+after the first year, she had no further news or remittances from
+father or mother, she determined, for a while at least, to maintain
+the infant at her own expense; for, when rebuked by her neighbours
+on this score, she stoutly swore that no parents could ever desert
+their children, and that some day or other she should not fail to be
+rewarded for her trouble with this one.
+
+Under this strange mental hallucination poor Goody Billings, who had
+five children and a husband of her own, continued to give food and
+shelter to little Tom for a period of no less than seven years; and
+though it must be acknowledged that the young gentleman did not in
+the slightest degree merit the kindnesses shown to him, Goody
+Billings, who was of a very soft and pitiful disposition, continued
+to bestow them upon him:  because, she said, he was lonely and
+unprotected, and deserved them more than other children who had
+fathers and mothers to look after them.  If, then, any difference
+was made between Tom's treatment and that of her own brood, it was
+considerably in favour of the former; to whom the largest
+proportions of treacle were allotted for his bread, and the
+handsomest supplies of hasty pudding.  Besides, to do Mrs. Billings
+justice, there WAS a party against him; and that consisted not only
+of her husband and her five children, but of every single person in
+the neighbourhood who had an opportunity of seeing and becoming
+acquainted with Master Tom.
+
+A celebrated philosopher--I think Miss Edgeworth--has broached the
+consolatory doctrine, that in intellect and disposition all human
+beings are entirely equal, and that circumstance and education are
+the causes of the distinctions and divisions which afterwards
+unhappily take place among them.  Not to argue this question, which
+places Jack Howard and Jack Thurtell on an exact level,--which would
+have us to believe that Lord Melbourne is by natural gifts and
+excellences a man as honest, brave, and far-sighted as the Duke of
+Wellington,--which would make out that Lord Lyndhurst is, in point
+of principle, eloquence, and political honesty, no better than Mr.
+O'Connell,--not, I say, arguing this doctrine, let us simply state
+that Master Thomas Billings (for, having no other, he took the name
+of the worthy people who adopted him) was in his long-coats
+fearfully passionate, screaming and roaring perpetually, and showing
+all the ill that he COULD show.  At the age of two, when his
+strength enabled him to toddle abroad, his favourite resort was the
+coal-hole or the dung-heap:  his roarings had not diminished in the
+least, and he had added to his former virtues two new ones,--a love
+of fighting and stealing; both which amiable qualities he had many
+opportunities of exercising every day.  He fought his little
+adoptive brothers and sisters; he kicked and cuffed his father and
+mother; he fought the cat, stamped upon the kittens, was worsted in
+a severe battle with the hen in the backyard; but, in revenge,
+nearly beat a little sucking-pig to death, whom he caught alone and
+rambling near his favourite haunt, the dung-hill.  As for stealing,
+he stole the eggs, which he perforated and emptied; the butter,
+which he ate with or without bread, as he could find it; the sugar,
+which he cunningly secreted in the leaves of a "Baker's Chronicle,"
+that nobody in the establishment could read; and thus from the pages
+of history he used to suck in all he knew--thieving and lying
+namely; in which, for his years, he made wonderful progress.  If any
+followers of Miss Edgeworth and the philosophers are inclined to
+disbelieve this statement, or to set it down as overcharged and
+distorted, let them be assured that just this very picture was, of
+all the pictures in the world, taken from nature.  I, Ikey Solomons,
+once had a dear little brother who could steal before he could walk
+(and this not from encouragement,--for, if you know the world, you
+must know that in families of our profession the point of honour is
+sacred at home,--but from pure nature)--who could steal, I say,
+before he could walk, and lie before he could speak; and who, at
+four and a half years of age, having attacked my sister Rebecca on
+some question of lollipops, had smitten her on the elbow with a
+fire-shovel, apologising to us by saying simply, "---- her, I wish
+it had been her head!"  Dear, dear Aminadab!  I think of you, and
+laugh these philosophers to scorn.  Nature made you for that career
+which you fulfilled:  you were from your birth to your dying a
+scoundrel; you COULDN'T have been anything else, however your lot
+was cast; and blessed it was that you were born among the prigs,-
+-for had you been of any other profession, alas! alas! what ills
+might you have done!  As I have heard the author of "Richelieu,"
+"Siamese Twins," etc. say "Poeta nascitur non fit," which means that
+though he had tried ever so much to be a poet, it was all moonshine:
+in the like manner, I say, "ROAGUS nascitur, non fit."  We have it
+from nature, and so a fig for Miss Edgeworth.
+
+In this manner, then, while his father, blessed with a wealthy wife,
+was leading, in a fine house, the life of a galley-slave; while his
+mother, married to Mr. Hayes, and made an honest women of, as the
+saying is, was passing her time respectably in Warwickshire, Mr.
+Thomas Billings was inhabiting the same county, not cared for by
+either of them; but ordained by Fate to join them one day, and have
+a mighty influence upon the fortunes of both.  For, as it has often
+happened to the traveller in the York or the Exeter coach to fall
+snugly asleep in his corner, and on awaking suddenly to find himself
+sixty or seventy miles from the place where Somnus first visited
+him:  as, we say, although you sit still, Time, poor wretch, keeps
+perpetually running on, and so must run day and night, with never a
+pause or a halt of five minutes to get a drink, until his dying day;
+let the reader imagine that since he left Mrs. Hayes and all the
+other worthy personages of this history, in the last chapter, seven
+years have sped away; during which, all our heroes and heroines have
+been accomplishing their destinies.
+
+Seven years of country carpentering, or rather trading, on the part
+of a husband, of ceaseless scolding, violence, and discontent on the
+part of a wife, are not pleasant to describe:  so we shall omit
+altogether any account of the early married life of Mr. and Mrs.
+John Hayes.  The "Newgate Calendar" (to which excellent compilation
+we and the OTHER popular novelists of the day can never be
+sufficiently grateful) states that Hayes left his house three or
+four times during this period, and, urged by the restless humours of
+his wife, tried several professions:  returning, however, as he grew
+weary of each, to his wife and his paternal home.  After a certain
+time his parents died, and by their demise he succeeded to a small
+property, and the carpentering business, which he for some time
+followed.
+
+What, then, in the meanwhile, had become of Captain Wood, or Brock,
+and Ensign Macshane?--the only persons now to be accounted for in
+our catalogue.  For about six months after their capture and release
+of Mr. Hayes, those noble gentlemen had followed, with much prudence
+and success, that trade which the celebrated and polite Duval, the
+ingenious Sheppard, the dauntless Turpin, and indeed many other
+heroes of our most popular novels, had pursued,--or were pursuing,
+in their time.  And so considerable were said to be Captain Wood's
+gains, that reports were abroad of his having somewhere a buried
+treasure; to which he might have added more, had not Fate suddenly
+cut short his career as a prig.  He and the Ensign were--shame to
+say--transported for stealing three pewter-pots off a railing at
+Exeter; and not being known in the town, which they had only reached
+that morning, they were detained by no further charges, but simply
+condemned on this one.  For this misdemeanour, Her Majesty's
+Government vindictively sent them for seven years beyond the sea;
+and, as the fashion then was, sold the use of their bodies to
+Virginian planters during that space of time.  It is thus, alas!
+that the strong are always used to deal with the weak, and many an
+honest fellow has been led to rue his unfortunate difference with
+the law.
+
+Thus, then, we have settled all scores.  The Count is in Holland
+with his wife; Mrs. Cat in Warwickshire along with her excellent
+husband; Master Thomas Billings with his adoptive parents in the
+same county; and the two military gentlemen watching the progress
+and cultivation of the tobacco and cotton plant in the New World.
+All these things having passed between the acts,
+dingaring-a-dingaring-a-dingledingleding, the drop draws up, and the
+next act begins.  By the way, the play ENDS with a drop:  but that
+is neither here nor there.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+(Here, as in a theatre, the orchestra is supposed to play something
+melodious.  The people get up, shake themselves, yawn, and settle
+down in their seats again.  "Porter, ale, ginger-beer, cider," comes
+round, squeezing through the legs of the gentlemen in the pit.
+Nobody takes anything, as usual; and lo! the curtain rises again.
+"Sh, 'shsh, 'shshshhh!  Hats off!" says everybody.)
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+Mrs. Hayes had now been for six years the adored wife of Mr. Hayes,
+and no offspring had arisen to bless their loves and perpetuate
+their name.  She had obtained a complete mastery over her lord and
+master; and having had, as far as was in that gentleman's power,
+every single wish gratified that she could demand, in the way of
+dress, treats to Coventry and Birmingham, drink, and what not--for,
+though a hard man, John Hayes had learned to spend his money pretty
+freely on himself and her--having had all her wishes gratified, it
+was natural that she should begin to find out some more; and the
+next whim she hit upon was to be restored to her child.  It may be
+as well to state that she had never informed her husband of the
+existence of that phenomenon, although he was aware of his wife's
+former connection with the Count,--Mrs. Hayes, in their matrimonial
+quarrels, invariably taunting him with accounts of her former
+splendour and happiness, and with his own meanness of taste in
+condescending to take up with his Excellency's leavings.
+
+She determined, then (but as yet had not confided her determination
+to her husband), she would have her boy; although in her seven
+years' residence within twenty miles of him she had never once
+thought of seeing him:  and the kind reader knows that when his
+excellent lady determines on a thing--a shawl, or an opera-box, or a
+new carriage, or twenty-four singing-lessons from Tamburini, or a
+night at the "Eagle Tavern," City Road, or a ride in a 'bus to
+Richmond and tea and brandy-and-water at "Rose Cottage Hotel"--the
+reader, high or low, knows that when Mrs. Reader desires a thing
+have it she will; you may just as well talk of avoiding her as of
+avoiding gout, bills, or grey hairs--and that, you know, is
+impossible.  I, for my part, have had all three--ay, and a wife too.
+
+I say that when a woman is resolved on a thing, happen it will; if
+husbands refuse, Fate will interfere (flectere si nequeo, etc.; but
+quotations are odious).  And some hidden power was working in the
+case of Mrs. Hayes, and, for its own awful purposes, lending her its
+aid.
+
+Who has not felt how he works--the dreadful conquering Spirit of
+Ill?  Who cannot see, in the circle of his own society, the fated
+and foredoomed to woe and evil?  Some call the doctrine of destiny a
+dark creed; but, for me, I would fain try and think it a consolatory
+one.  It is better, with all one's sins upon one's head, to deem
+oneself in the hands of Fate, than to think--with our fierce
+passions and weak repentances; with our resolves so loud, so vain,
+so ludicrously, despicably weak and frail; with our dim, wavering,
+wretched conceits about virtue, and our irresistible propensity to
+wrong,--that we are the workers of our future sorrow or happiness.
+If we depend on our strength, what is it against mighty
+circumstance?  If we look to ourselves, what hope have we?  Look
+back at the whole of your life, and see how Fate has mastered you
+and it.  Think of your disappointments and your successes.  Has YOUR
+striving influenced one or the other?  A fit of indigestion puts
+itself between you and honours and reputation; an apple plops on
+your nose and makes you a world's wonder and glory; a fit of poverty
+makes a rascal of you, who were, and are still, an honest man;
+clubs, trumps, or six lucky mains at dice, make an honest man for
+life of you, who ever were, will be, and are a rascal.  Who sends
+the illness? who causes the apple to fall? who deprives you of your
+worldly goods? or who shuffles the cards, and brings trumps, honour,
+virtue, and prosperity back again?  You call it chance; ay, and so
+it is chance that when the floor gives way, and the rope stretches
+tight, the poor wretch before St. Sepulchre's clock dies.  Only with
+us, clear-sighted mortals as we are, we can't SEE the rope by which
+we hang, and know not when or how the drop may fall.
+
+But revenons a nos moutons:  let us return to that sweet lamb Master
+Thomas, and the milk-white ewe Mrs. Cat.  Seven years had passed
+away, and she began to think that she should very much like to see
+her child once more.  It was written that she should; and you shall
+hear how, soon after, without any great exertions of hers, back he
+came to her.
+
+In the month of July, in the year 1715, there came down a road about
+ten miles from the city of Worcester, two gentlemen; not mounted,
+Templar-like, upon one horse, but having a horse between them--a
+sorry bay, with a sorry saddle, and a large pack behind it; on which
+each by turn took a ride.  Of the two, one was a man of excessive
+stature, with red hair, a very prominent nose, and a faded military
+dress; while the other, an old weather-beaten, sober-looking
+personage, wore the costume of a civilian--both man and dress
+appearing to have reached the autumnal, or seedy state.  However,
+the pair seemed, in spite of their apparent poverty, to be passably
+merry.  The old gentleman rode the horse; and had, in the course of
+their journey, ridden him two miles at least in every three.  The
+tall one walked with immense strides by his side; and seemed,
+indeed, as if he could have quickly outstripped the four-footed
+animal, had he chosen to exert his speed, or had not affection for
+his comrade retained him at his stirrup.
+
+A short time previously the horse had cast a shoe; and this the tall
+man on foot had gathered up, and was holding in his hand:  it having
+been voted that the first blacksmith to whose shop they should come
+should be called upon to fit it again upon the bay horse.
+
+"Do you remimber this counthry, Meejor?" said the tall man, who was
+looking about him very much pleased, and sucking a flower.  "I think
+thim green cornfields is prettier looking at than the d----- tobacky
+out yondther, and bad lack to it!"
+
+"I recollect the place right well, and some queer pranks we played
+here seven years agone," responded the gentleman addressed as Major.
+"You remember that man and his wife, whom we took in pawn at the
+'Three Rooks'?"
+
+"And the landlady only hung last Michaelmas?" said the tall man,
+parenthetically.
+
+"Hang the landlady!--we've got all we ever would out of HER, you
+know.  But about the man and woman.  You went after the chap's
+mother, and, like a jackass, as you are, let him loose.  Well, the
+woman was that Catherine that you've often heard me talk about.  I
+like the wench, ---- her, for I almost brought her up; and she was
+for a year or two along with that scoundrel Galgenstein, who has
+been the cause of my ruin."
+
+"The inferrnal blackguard and ruffian!" said the tall man; who, with
+his companion, has no doubt been recognised by the reader.
+
+"Well, this Catherine had a child by Galgenstein; and somewhere here
+hard by the woman lived to whom we carried the brat to nurse.  She
+was the wife of a blacksmith, one Billings:  it won't be out of the
+way to get our horse shod at his house, if he is alive still, and we
+may learn something about the little beast.  I should be glad to see
+the mother well enough."
+
+"Do I remimber her?" said the Ensign.  "Do I remimber whisky?  Sure
+I do, and the snivelling sneak her husband, and the stout old lady
+her mother-in-law, and the dirty one-eyed ruffian who sold me the
+parson's hat that had so nearly brought me into trouble.  Oh but it
+was a rare rise we got out of them chaps, and the old landlady
+that's hanged too!"  And here both Ensign Macshane and Major Brock,
+or Wood, grinned, and showed much satisfaction.
+
+It will be necessary to explain the reason of it.  We gave the
+British public to understand that the landlady of the "Three Rooks,"
+at Worcester, was a notorious fence, or banker of thieves; that is,
+a purchaser of their merchandise.  In her hands Mr. Brock and his
+companion had left property to the amount of sixty or seventy
+pounds, which was secreted in a cunning recess in a chamber of the
+"Three Rooks" known only to the landlady and the gentlemen who
+banked with her; and in this place, Mr. Sicklop, the one-eyed man
+who had joined in the Hayes adventure, his comrade, and one or two
+of the topping prigs of the county, were free.  Mr. Sicklop had been
+shot dead in a night attack near Bath:  the landlady had been
+suddenly hanged, as an accomplice in another case of robbery; and
+when, on their return from Virginia, our two heroes, whose hopes of
+livelihood depended upon it, had bent their steps towards Worcester,
+they were not a little frightened to hear of the cruel fate of the
+hostess and many of the amiable frequenters of the "Three Rooks."
+All the goodly company were separated; the house was no longer an
+inn.  Was the money gone too?  At least it was worth while to look--
+which Messrs. Brock and Macshane determined to do.
+
+The house being now a private one, Mr. Brock, with a genius that was
+above his station, visited its owner, with a huge portfolio under
+his arm, and, in the character of a painter, requested permission to
+take a particular sketch from a particular window.  The Ensign
+followed with the artist's materials (consisting simply of a
+screwdriver and a crowbar); and it is hardly necessary to say that,
+when admission was granted to them, they opened the well-known door,
+and to their inexpressible satisfaction discovered, not their own
+peculiar savings exactly, for these had been appropriated instantly,
+on hearing of their transportation, but stores of money and goods to
+the amount of near three hundred pounds:  to which Mr. Macshane said
+they had as just and honourable a right as anybody else.  And so
+they had as just a right as anybody--except the original owners:
+but who was to discover them?
+
+With this booty they set out on their journey--anywhere, for they
+knew not whither; and it so chanced that when their horse's shoe
+came off, they were within a few furlongs of the cottage of Mr.
+Billings, the blacksmith.  As they came near, they were saluted by
+tremendous roars issuing from the smithy.  A small boy was held
+across the bellows, two or three children of smaller and larger
+growth were holding him down, and many others of the village were
+gazing in at the window, while a man, half-naked, was lashing the
+little boy with a whip, and occasioning the cries heard by the
+travellers.  As the horse drew up, the operator looked at the new-
+comers for a moment, and then proceeded incontinently with his work;
+belabouring the child more fiercely than ever.
+
+When he had done, he turned round to the new-comers and asked how he
+could serve them? whereupon Mr. Wood (for such was the name he
+adopted, and by such we shall call him to the end) wittily remarked
+that however he might wish to serve THEM, he seemed mightily
+inclined to serve that young gentleman first.
+
+"It's no joking matter," said the blacksmith:  "if I don't serve him
+so now, he'll be worse off in his old age.  He'll come to the
+gallows, as sure as his name is Bill---never mind what his name is."
+And so saying, he gave the urchin another cut; which elicited, of
+course, another scream.
+
+"Oh! his name is Bill?" said Captain Wood.
+
+"His name's NOT Bill!" said the blacksmith, sulkily.  "He's no name;
+and no heart, neither.  My wife took the brat in, seven years ago,
+from a beggarly French chap to nurse, and she kept him, for she was
+a good soul" (here his eyes began to wink), "and she's--she's gone
+now" (here he began fairly to blubber).  "And d--- him, out of love
+for her, I kept him too, and the scoundrel is a liar and a thief.
+This blessed day, merely to vex me and my boys here, he spoke ill of
+her, he did, and I'll--cut--his--life--out--I--will!" and with each
+word honest Mulciber applied a whack on the body of little Tom
+Billings; who, by shrill shrieks, and oaths in treble, acknowledged
+the receipt of the blows.
+
+"Come, come," said Mr. Wood, "set the boy down, and the bellows
+a-going; my horse wants shoeing, and the poor lad has had strapping
+enough."
+
+The blacksmith obeyed, and cast poor Master Thomas loose.  As he
+staggered away and looked back at his tormentor, his countenance
+assumed an expression which made Mr. Wood say, grasping hold of
+Macshane's arm, "It's the boy, it's the boy!  When his mother gave
+Galgenstein the laudanum, she had the self-same look with her!"
+
+"Had she really now?" said Mr. Macshane.  "And pree, Meejor, who WAS
+his mother?"
+
+"Mrs. Cat, you fool!" answered Wood.
+
+"Then, upon my secred word of honour, she has a mighty fine KITTEN
+anyhow, my dear.  Aha!"
+
+"They don't DROWN such kittens," said Mr. Wood, archly; and
+Macshane, taking the allusion, clapped his finger to his nose in
+token of perfect approbation of his commander's sentiment.
+
+While the blacksmith was shoeing the horse, Mr. Wood asked him many
+questions concerning the lad whom he had just been chastising, and
+succeeded, beyond a doubt, in establishing his identity with the
+child whom Catherine Hall had brought into the world seven years
+since.  Billings told him of all the virtues of his wife, and the
+manifold crimes of the lad:  how he stole, and fought, and lied, and
+swore; and though the youngest under his roof, exercised the most
+baneful influence over all the rest of his family.  He was
+determined at last, he said, to put him to the parish, for he did
+not dare to keep him.
+
+"He's a fine whelp, and would fetch ten pieces in Virginny," sighed
+the Ensign.
+
+"Crimp, of Bristol, would give five for him," said Mr. Wood,
+ruminating.
+
+"Why not take him?" said the Ensign.
+
+"Faith, why not?" said Mr. Wood.  "His keep, meanwhile, will not be
+sixpence a day."  Then turning round to the blacksmith, "Mr.
+Billings," said he, "you will be surprised, perhaps, to hear that I
+know everything regarding that poor lad's history.  His mother was
+an unfortunate lady of high family, now no more; his father a German
+nobleman, Count de Galgenstein by name."
+
+"The very man!" said Billings:  "a young, fair-haired man, who came
+here with the child, and a dragoon sergeant."
+
+"Count de Galgenstein by name, who, on the point of death,
+recommended the infant to me."
+
+"And did he pay you seven years' boarding?" said Mr. Billings, who
+was quite alive at the very idea.
+
+"Alas, sir, not a jot!  He died, sir, six hundred pounds in my debt;
+didn't he, Ensign?"
+
+"Six hundred, upon my secred honour!  I remember when he got into
+the house along with the poli--"
+
+"Psha! what matters it?" here broke out Mr. Wood, looking fiercely
+at the Ensign.  "Six hundred pounds he owes me:  how was he to pay
+you?  But he told me to take charge of this boy, if I found him; and
+found him I have, and WILL take charge of him, if you will hand him
+over."
+
+"Send our Tom!" cried Billings.  And when that youth appeared,
+scowling, and yet trembling, and prepared, as it seemed, for another
+castigation, his father, to his surprise, asked him if he was
+willing to go along with those gentlemen, or whether he would be a
+good lad and stay with him.
+
+Mr. Tom replied immediately, "I won't be a good lad, and I'd rather
+go to ---- than stay with you!"
+
+"Will you leave your brothers and sisters?" said Billings, looking
+very dismal.
+
+"Hang my brothers and sisters--I hate 'em; and, besides, I haven't
+got any!"
+
+"But you had a good mother, hadn't you, Tom?"
+
+Tom paused for a moment.
+
+"Mother's gone," said he, "and you flog me, and I'll go with these
+men."
+
+"Well, then, go thy ways," said Billings, starting up in a passion:
+"go thy ways for a graceless reprobate; and if this gentleman will
+take you, he may do so."
+
+After some further parley, the conversation ended, and the next
+morning Mr. Wood's party consisted of three:  a little boy being
+mounted upon the bay horse, in addition to the Ensign or himself;
+and the whole company went journeying towards Bristol.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+We have said that Mrs. Hayes had, on a sudden, taken a fit of
+maternal affection, and was bent upon being restored to her child;
+and that benign destiny which watched over the life of this lucky
+lady instantly set about gratifying her wish, and, without cost to
+herself of coach-hire or saddle-horse, sent the young gentleman very
+quickly to her arms.  The village in which the Hayeses dwelt was but
+a very few miles out of the road from Bristol; whither, on the
+benevolent mission above, hinted at, our party of worthies were
+bound:  and coming, towards the afternoon, in sight of the house of
+that very Justice Ballance who had been so nearly the ruin of Ensign
+Macshane, that officer narrated, for the hundredth time, and with
+much glee, the circumstances which had then befallen him, and the
+manner in which Mrs. Hayes the elder had come forward to his rescue.
+
+"Suppose we go and see the old girl?" suggested Mr. Wood.  "No harm
+can come to us now."  And his comrade always assenting, they wound
+their way towards the village, and reached it as the evening came
+on.  In the public-house where they rested, Wood made inquiries
+concerning the Hayes family; was informed of the death of the old
+couple, of the establishment of John Hayes and his wife in their
+place, and of the kind of life that these latter led together.  When
+all these points had been imparted to him, he ruminated much:  an
+expression of sublime triumph and exultation at length lighted up
+his features.  "I think, Tim," said he at last, "that we can make
+more than five pieces of that boy."
+
+"Oh, in coorse!" said Timothy Macshane, Esquire; who always agreed
+with his "Meejor."
+
+"In coorse, you fool! and how?  I'll tell you how.  This Hayes is
+well to do in the world, and--"
+
+"And we'll nab him again--ha, ha!" roared out Macshane.  "By my
+secred honour, Meejor, there never was a gineral like you at a
+strathyjam!"
+
+"Peace, you bellowing donkey, and don't wake the child.  The man is
+well to do, his wife rules him, and they have no children.  Now,
+either she will be very glad to have the boy back again, and pay for
+the finding of him, or else she has said nothing about him, and will
+pay us for being silent too:  or, at any rate, Hayes himself will be
+ashamed at finding his wife the mother of a child a year older than
+his marriage, and will pay for the keeping of the brat away.
+There's profit, my dear, in any one of the cases, or my name's not
+Peter Brock."
+
+When the Ensign understood this wondrous argument, he would fain
+have fallen on his knees and worshipped his friend and guide.  They
+began operations, almost immediately, by an attack on Mrs. Hayes.
+On hearing, as she did in private interview with the ex-corporal the
+next morning, that her son was found, she was agitated by both of
+the passions which Wood attributed to her.  She longed to have the
+boy back, and would give any reasonable sum to see him; but she
+dreaded exposure, and would pay equally to avoid that.  How could
+she gain the one point and escape the other?
+
+Mrs. Hayes hit upon an expedient which, I am given to understand, is
+not uncommon nowadays.  She suddenly discovered that she had a dear
+brother, who had been obliged to fly the country in consequence of
+having joined the Pretender, and had died in France, leaving behind
+him an only son.  This boy her brother had, with his last breath,
+recommended to her protection, and had confided him to the charge of
+a brother officer who was now in the country, and would speedily
+make his appearance; and, to put the story beyond a doubt, Mr. Wood
+wrote the letter from her brother stating all these particulars, and
+Ensign Macshane received full instructions how to perform the part
+of the "brother officer."  What consideration Mr. Wood received for
+his services, we cannot say; only it is well known that Mr. Hayes
+caused to be committed to gaol a young apprentice in his service,
+charged with having broken open a cupboard in which Mr. Hayes had
+forty guineas in gold and silver, and to which none but he and his
+wife had access.
+
+Having made these arrangements, the Corporal and his little party
+decamped to a short distance, and Mrs. Catherine was left to prepare
+her husband for a speedy addition to his family, in the shape of
+this darling nephew.  John Hayes received the news with anything but
+pleasure.  He had never heard of any brother of Catherine's; she had
+been bred at the workhouse, and nobody ever hinted that she had
+relatives:  but it is easy for a lady of moderate genius to invent
+circumstances; and with lies, tears, threats, coaxings, oaths, and
+other blandishments, she compelled him to submit.
+
+Two days afterwards, as Mr. Hayes was working in his shop with his
+lady seated beside him, the trampling of a horse was heard in his
+courtyard, and a gentleman, of huge stature, descended from it, and
+strode into the shop.  His figure was wrapped in a large cloak; but
+Mr. Hayes could not help fancying that he had somewhere seen his
+face before.
+
+"This, I preshoom," said the gentleman, "is Misther Hayes, that I
+have come so many miles to see, and this is his amiable lady?  I was
+the most intimate frind, madam, of your laminted brother, who died
+in King Lewis's service, and whose last touching letthers I
+despatched to you two days ago.  I have with me a further precious
+token of my dear friend, Captain Hall--it is HERE."
+
+And so saying, the military gentleman, with one arm, removed his
+cloak, and stretching forward the other into Hayes's face almost,
+stretched likewise forward a little boy, grinning and sprawling in
+the air, and prevented only from falling to the ground by the hold
+which the Ensign kept of the waistband of his little coat and
+breeches.
+
+"Isn't he a pretty boy?" said Mrs. Hayes, sidling up to her husband
+tenderly, and pressing one of Mr. Hayes's hands.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+About the lad's beauty it is needless to say what the carpenter
+thought; but that night, and for many many nights after, the lad
+stayed at Mr. Hayes's.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.  ENUMERATES THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF MASTER THOMAS
+BILLINGS--INTRODUCES BROCK AS DOCTOR  WOOD--AND ANNOUNCES THE
+EXECUTION OF ENSIGN MACSHANE.
+
+
+
+We are obliged, in recording this history, to follow accurately that
+great authority, the "Calendarium Newgaticum Roagorumque
+Registerium," of which every lover of literature, in the present day
+knows the value; and as that remarkable work totally discards all
+the unities in its narratives, and reckons the life of its heroes
+only by their actions, and not by periods of time, we must follow in
+the wake of this mighty ark--a humble cock-boat.  When it pauses, we
+pause; when it runs ten knots an hour, we run with the same
+celerity; and as, in order to carry the reader from the penultimate
+chapter of this work unto the last chapter, we were compelled to
+make him leap over a gap of seven blank years, ten years more must
+likewise be granted to us before we are at liberty to resume our
+history.
+
+During that period, Master Thomas Billings had been under the
+especial care of his mother; and, as may be imagined, he rather
+increased than diminished the accomplishments for which he had been
+remarkable while under the roof of his foster-father.  And with this
+advantage, that while at the blacksmith's, and only three or four
+years of age, his virtues were necessarily appreciated only in his
+family circle and among those few acquaintances of his own time of
+life whom a youth of three can be expected to meet in the alleys or
+over the gutters of a small country hamlet,--in his mothers
+residence, his circle extended with his own growth, and he began to
+give proofs of those powers of which in infancy there had been only
+encouraging indications.  Thus it was nowise remarkable that a child
+of four years should not know his letters, and should have had a
+great disinclination to learn them; but when a young man of fifteen
+showed the same creditable ignorance, the same undeviating dislike,
+it was easy to see that he possessed much resolution and
+perseverance.  When it was remarked, too, that, in case of any
+difference, he not only beat the usher, but by no means disdained to
+torment and bully the very smallest boys of the school, it was easy
+to see that his mind was comprehensive and careful, as well as
+courageous and grasping.  As it was said of the Duke of Wellington,
+in the Peninsula, that he had a thought for everybody--from Lord
+Hill to the smallest drummer in the army--in like manner Tom
+Billings bestowed HIS attention on high and low; but in the shape of
+blows:  he would fight the strongest and kick the smallest, and was
+always at work with one or the other.  At thirteen, when he was
+removed from the establishment whither he had been sent, he was the
+cock of the school out of doors, and the very last boy in.  He used
+to let the little boys and new-comers pass him by, and laugh; but he
+always belaboured them unmercifully afterwards; and then it was, he
+said, HIS turn to laugh.  With such a pugnacious turn, Tom Billings
+ought to have been made a soldier, and might have died a marshal;
+but, by an unlucky ordinance of fate, he was made a tailor, and died
+a--never mind what for the present; suffice it to say, that he was
+suddenly cut off, at a very early period of his existence, by a
+disease which has exercised considerable ravages among the British
+youth.
+
+By consulting the authority above mentioned, we find that Hayes did
+not confine himself to the profession of a carpenter, or remain long
+established in the country; but was induced, by the eager spirit of
+Mrs. Catherine most probably, to try his fortune in the metropolis;
+where he lived, flourished, and died.  Oxford Road, Saint Giles's,
+and Tottenham Court were, at various periods of his residence in
+town, inhabited by him.  At one place he carried on the business of
+greengrocer and small-coalman; in another, he was carpenter,
+undertaker, and lender of money to the poor; finally, he was a
+lodging-house keeper in the Oxford or Tyburn Road; but continued to
+exercise the last-named charitable profession.
+
+Lending as he did upon pledges, and carrying on a pretty large
+trade, it was not for him, of course, to inquire into the pedigree
+of all the pieces of plate, the bales of cloth, swords, watches,
+wigs, shoe-buckles, etc. that were confided by his friends to his
+keeping; but it is clear that his friends had the requisite
+confidence in him, and that he enjoyed the esteem of a class of
+characters who still live in history, and are admired unto this very
+day.  The mind loves to think that, perhaps, in Mr. Hayes's back
+parlour the gallant Turpin might have hob-and-nobbed with Mrs.
+Catherine; that here, perhaps, the noble Sheppard might have cracked
+his joke, or quaffed his pint of rum.  Who knows but that Macheath
+and Paul Clifford may have crossed legs under Hayes's dinner-table?
+But why pause to speculate on things that might have been? why
+desert reality for fond imagination, or call up from their honoured
+graves the sacred dead?  I know not:  and yet, in sooth, I can never
+pass Cumberland Gate without a sigh, as I think of the gallant
+cavaliers who traversed that road in old time.  Pious priests
+accompanied their triumphs; their chariots were surrounded by hosts
+of glittering javelin-men.  As the slave at the car of the Roman
+conqueror shouted, "Remember thou art mortal!", before the eyes of
+the British warrior rode the undertaker and his coffin, telling him
+that he too must die!  Mark well the spot!  A hundred years ago
+Albion Street (where comic Power dwelt, Milesia's darling son)-
+-Albion Street was a desert.  The square of Connaught was without
+its penultimate, and, strictly speaking, NAUGHT.  The Edgware Road
+was then a road, 'tis true; with tinkling waggons passing now and
+then, and fragrant walls of snowy hawthorn blossoms.  The ploughman
+whistled over Nutford Place; down the green solitudes of Sovereign
+Street the merry milkmaid led the lowing kine.  Here, then, in the
+midst of green fields and sweet air--before ever omnibuses were, and
+when Pineapple Turnpike and Terrace were alike unknown--here stood
+Tyburn:  and on the road towards it, perhaps to enjoy the prospect,
+stood, in the year 1725, the habitation of Mr. John Hayes.
+
+One fine morning in the year 1725, Mrs. Hayes, who had been abroad
+in her best hat and riding-hood; Mr. Hayes, who for a wonder had
+accompanied her; and Mrs. Springatt, a lodger, who for a
+remuneration had the honour of sharing Mrs. Hayes's friendship and
+table:  all returned, smiling and rosy, at about half-past ten
+o'clock, from a walk which they had taken to Bayswater.  Many
+thousands of people were likewise seen flocking down the Oxford
+Road; and you would rather have thought, from the smartness of their
+appearance and the pleasure depicted in their countenances, that
+they were just issuing from a sermon, than quitting the ceremony
+which they had been to attend.
+
+The fact is, that they had just been to see a gentleman hanged,--a
+cheap pleasure, which the Hayes family never denied themselves; and
+they returned home with a good appetite to breakfast, braced by the
+walk, and tickled into hunger, as it were, by the spectacle.  I can
+recollect, when I was a gyp at Cambridge, that the "men" used to
+have breakfast-parties for the very same purpose; and the exhibition
+of the morning acted infallibly upon the stomach, and caused the
+young students to eat with much voracity.
+
+Well, Mrs. Catherine, a handsome, well-dressed, plump, rosy woman of
+three or four and thirty (and when, my dear, is a woman handsomer
+than at that age?), came in quite merrily from her walk, and entered
+the back-parlour, which looked into a pleasant yard, or garden,
+whereon the sun was shining very gaily; and where, at a table
+covered with a nice white cloth, laid out with some silver mugs,
+too, and knives, all with different crests and patterns, sat an old
+gentleman reading in an old book.
+
+"Here we are at last, Doctor," said Mrs. Hayes, "and here's his
+speech."  She produced the little halfpenny tract, which to this day
+is sold at the gallows-foot upon the death of every offender.  "I've
+seen a many men turned off, to be sure; but I never did see one who
+bore it more like a man than he did."
+
+"My dear," said the gentleman addressed as Doctor, "he was as cool
+and as brave as steel, and no more minded hanging than
+tooth-drawing."
+
+"It was the drink that ruined him," said Mrs. Cat.
+
+"Drink, and bad company.  I warned him, my dear,--I warned him years
+ago:  and directly he got into Wild's gang, I knew that he had not a
+year to run.  Ah, why, my love, will men continue such dangerous
+courses," continued the Doctor, with a sigh, "and jeopardy their
+lives for a miserable watch or a snuff-box, of which Mr. Wild takes
+three-fourths of the produce?  But here comes the breakfast; and,
+egad, I am as hungry as a lad of twenty."
+
+Indeed, at this moment Mrs. Hayes's servant appeared with a smoking
+dish of bacon and greens; and Mr. Hayes himself ascended from the
+cellar (of which he kept the key), bearing with him a tolerably
+large jug of small-beer.  To this repast the Doctor, Mrs. Springatt
+(the other lodger), and Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, proceeded with great
+alacrity.  A fifth cover was laid, but not used; the company
+remarking that "Tom had very likely found some acquaintances at
+Tyburn, with whom he might choose to pass the morning."
+
+Tom was Master Thomas Billings, now of the age of sixteen:  slim,
+smart, five feet ten inches in height, handsome, sallow in
+complexion, black-eyed and black-haired.  Mr. Billings was
+apprentice to a tailor, of tolerable practice, who was to take him
+into partnership at the end of his term.  It was supposed, and with
+reason, that Tom would not fail to make a fortune in this business;
+of which the present head was one Beinkleider, a German.
+Beinkleider was skilful in his trade (after the manner of his
+nation, which in breeches and metaphysics--in inexpressibles and
+incomprehensibles--may instruct all Europe), but too fond of his
+pleasure.  Some promissory notes of his had found their way into
+Hayes's hands, and had given him the means not only of providing
+Master Billings with a cheap apprenticeship, and a cheap partnership
+afterwards; but would empower him, in one or two years after the
+young partner had joined the firm, to eject the old one altogether.
+So that there was every prospect that, when Mr. Billings was
+twenty-one years of age, poor Beinkleider would have to act, not as
+his master, but his journeyman.
+
+Tom was a very precocious youth; was supplied by a doting mother
+with plenty of pocket-money, and spent it with a number of lively
+companions of both sexes, at plays, bull-baitings, fairs, jolly
+parties on the river, and such-like innocent amusements.  He could
+throw a main, too, as well as his elders; had pinked his man, in a
+row at Madam King's in the Piazza; and was much respected at the
+Roundhouse.
+
+Mr. Hayes was not very fond of this promising young gentleman;
+indeed, he had the baseness to bear malice, because, in a quarrel
+which occurred about two years previously, he, Hayes, being desirous
+to chastise Mr. Billings, had found himself not only quite
+incompetent, but actually at the mercy of the boy; who struck him
+over the head with a joint-stool, felled him to the ground, and
+swore he would have his life.  The Doctor, who was then also a
+lodger at Mr. Hayes's, interposed, and restored the combatants, not
+to friendship, but to peace.  Hayes never afterwards attempted to
+lift his hand to the young man, but contented himself with hating
+him profoundly.  In this sentiment Mr. Billings participated
+cordially; and, quite unlike Mr. Hayes, who never dared to show his
+dislike, used on every occasion when they met, by actions, looks,
+words, sneers, and curses, to let his stepfather know the opinion
+which he had of him.  Why did not Hayes discard the boy altogether?
+Because, if he did so, he was really afraid of his life, and because
+he trembled before Mrs. Hayes, his lady, as the leaf trembles before
+the tempest in October.  His breath was not his own, but hers; his
+money, too, had been chiefly of her getting,--for though he was as
+stingy and mean as mortal man can be, and so likely to save much, he
+had not the genius for GETTING which Mrs. Hayes possessed.  She kept
+his books (for she had learned to read and write by this time), she
+made his bargains, and she directed the operations of the
+poor-spirited little capitalist.  When bills became due, and debtors
+pressed for time, then she brought Hayes's own professional merits
+into play.  The man was as deaf and cold as a rock; never did poor
+tradesmen gain a penny from him; never were the bailiffs delayed one
+single minute from their prey.  The Beinkleider business, for
+instance, showed pretty well the genius of the two.  Hayes was for
+closing with him at once; but his wife saw the vast profits which
+might be drawn out of him, and arranged the apprenticeship and the
+partnership before alluded to.  The woman heartily scorned and spit
+upon her husband, who fawned upon her like a spaniel.  She loved
+good cheer; she did not want for a certain kind of generosity.  The
+only feeling that Hayes had for anyone except himself was for his
+wife, whom he held in a cowardly awe and attachment:  he liked
+drink, too, which made him chirping and merry, and accepted
+willingly any treats that his acquaintances might offer him; but he
+would suffer agonies when his wife brought or ordered from the
+cellar a bottle of wine.
+
+And now for the Doctor.  He was about seventy years of age.  He had
+been much abroad; he was of a sober, cheerful aspect; he dressed
+handsomely and quietly in a broad hat and cassock; but saw no
+company except the few friends whom he met at the coffee-house.  He
+had an income of about one hundred pounds, which he promised to
+leave to young Billings.  He was amused with the lad, and fond of
+his mother, and had boarded with them for some years past.  The
+Doctor, in fact, was our old friend Corporal Brock, the Reverend
+Doctor Wood now, as he had been Major Wood fifteen years back.
+
+Anyone who has read the former part of this history must have seen
+that we have spoken throughout with invariable respect of Mr. Brock;
+and that in every circumstance in which he has appeared, he has
+acted not only with prudence, but often with genius.  The early
+obstacle to Mr. Brock's success was want of conduct simply.  Drink,
+women, play--how many a brave fellow have they ruined!--had pulled
+Brock down as often as his merit had carried him up.  When a man's
+passion for play has brought him to be a scoundrel, it at once
+ceases to be hurtful to him in a worldly point of view; he cheats,
+and wins.  It is only for the idle and luxurious that women retain
+their fascinations to a very late period; and Brock's passions had
+been whipped out of him in Virginia; where much ill-health,
+ill-treatment, hard labour, and hard food, speedily put an end to
+them.  He forgot there even how to drink; rum or wine made this poor
+declining gentleman so ill that he could indulge in them no longer;
+and so his three vices were cured.
+
+Had he been ambitious, there is little doubt but that Mr. Brock, on
+his return from transportation, might have risen in the world; but
+he was old and a philosopher:  he did not care about rising.  Living
+was cheaper in those days, and interest for money higher:  when he
+had amassed about six hundred pounds, he purchased an annuity of
+seventy-two pounds, and gave out--why should he not?--that he had
+the capital as well as the interest.  After leaving the Hayes family
+in the country, he found them again in London:  he took up his abode
+with them, and was attached to the mother and the son.  Do you
+suppose that rascals have not affections like other people? hearts,
+madam--ay, hearts--and family ties which they cherish?  As the
+Doctor lived on with this charming family he began to regret that he
+had sunk all his money in annuities, and could not, as he repeatedly
+vowed he would, leave his savings to his adopted children.
+
+He felt an indescribable pleasure ("suave mari magno," etc.) in
+watching the storms and tempests of the Hayes menage.  He used to
+encourage Mrs. Catherine into anger when, haply, that lady's fits of
+calm would last too long; he used to warm up the disputes between
+wife and husband, mother and son, and enjoy them beyond expression:
+they served him for daily amusement; and he used to laugh until the
+tears ran down his venerable cheeks at the accounts which young Tom
+continually brought him of his pranks abroad, among watchmen and
+constables, at taverns or elsewhere.
+
+When, therefore, as the party were discussing their bacon and
+cabbage, before which the Reverend Doctor with much gravity said
+grace, Master Tom entered.  Doctor Wood, who had before been rather
+gloomy, immediately brightened up, and made a place for Billings
+between himself and Mrs. Catherine.
+
+"How do, old cock?" said that young gentleman familiarly.  "How goes
+it, mother?"  And so saying, he seized eagerly upon the jug of beer
+which Mr. Hayes had drawn, and from which the latter was about to
+help himself, and poured down his throat exactly one quart.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Billings, drawing breath after a draught which he had
+learned accurately to gauge from the habit of drinking out of pewter
+measures which held precisely that quantity.--" Ah!" said Mr.
+Billings, drawing breath, and wiping his mouth with his sleeves,
+"this is very thin stuff, old Squaretoes; but my coppers have been
+red-hot since last night, and they wanted a sluicing."
+
+"Should you like some ale, dear?" said Mrs. Hayes, that fond and
+judicious parent.
+
+"A quart of brandy, Tom?" said Doctor Wood.  "Your papa will run
+down to the cellar for it in a minute."
+
+"I'll see him hanged first!" cried Mr. Hayes, quite frightened.
+
+"Oh, fie, now, you unnatural father!" said the Doctor.
+
+The very name of father used to put Mr. Hayes in a fury.  "I'm not
+his father, thank Heaven!" said he.
+
+"No, nor nobody else's," said Tom.
+
+Mr. Hayes only muttered "Base-born brat!"
+
+"His father was a gentleman,--that's more than you ever were!"
+screamed Mrs. Hayes.  "His father was a man of spirit; no cowardly
+sneak of a carpenter, Mr Hayes!  Tom has noble blood in his veins,
+for all he has a tailor's appearance; and if his mother had had her
+right, she would be now in a coach-and-six."
+
+"I wish I could find my father," said Tom; "for I think Polly Briggs
+and I would look mighty well in a coach-and-six."  Tom fancied that
+if his father was a count at the time of his birth, he must be a
+prince now; and, indeed, went among his companions by the latter
+august title.
+
+"Ay, Tom, that you would," cried his mother, looking at him fondly.
+
+"With a sword by my side, and a hat and feather there's never a lord
+at St. James's would cut a finer figure."
+
+After a little more of this talk, in which Mrs. Hayes let the
+company know her high opinion of her son--who, as usual, took care
+to show his extreme contempt for his stepfather--the latter retired
+to his occupations; the lodger, Mrs. Springatt, who had never said a
+word all this time, retired to her apartment on the second floor;
+and, pulling out their pipes and tobacco, the old gentleman and the
+young one solaced themselves with half-an-hour's more talk and
+smoking; while the thrifty Mrs. Hayes, opposite to them, was busy
+with her books.
+
+"What's in the confessions?" said Mr. Billings to Doctor Wood.
+"There were six of 'em besides Mac:  two for sheep, four
+housebreakers; but nothing of consequence, I fancy."
+
+"There's the paper," said Wood, archly.  "Read for yourself, Tom."
+
+Mr. Tom looked at the same time very fierce and very foolish; for,
+though he could drink, swear, and fight as well as any lad of his
+inches in England, reading was not among his accomplishments.  "I
+tell you what, Doctor," said he, "---- you! have no bantering with
+me,--for I'm not the man that will bear it,-- me!" and he threw a
+tremendous swaggering look across the table.
+
+"I want you to learn to read, Tommy dear.  Look at your mother there
+over her books:  she keeps them as neat as a scrivener now, and at
+twenty she could make never a stroke."
+
+"Your godfather speaks for your good, child; and for me, thou
+knowest that I have promised thee a gold-headed cane and periwig on
+the first day that thou canst read me a column of the Flying Post."
+
+"Hang the periwig!" said Mr. Tom, testily.  "Let my godfather read
+the paper himself, if he has a liking for it."
+
+Whereupon the old gentleman put on his spectacles, and glanced over
+the sheet of whity-brown paper, which, ornamented with a picture of
+a gallows at the top, contained the biographies of the seven unlucky
+individuals who had that morning suffered the penalty of the law.
+With the six heroes who came first in the list we have nothing to
+do; but have before us a copy of the paper containing the life of
+No. 7, and which the Doctor read in an audible voice.
+
+                     "CAPTAIN MACSHANE.
+
+"The seventh victim to his own crimes was the famous highwayman,
+Captain Macshane, so well known as the Irish Fire-eater.
+
+"The Captain came to the ground in a fine white lawn shirt and
+nightcap; and, being a Papist in his religion, was attended by
+Father O'Flaherty, Popish priest, and chaplain to the Bavarian
+Envoy.
+
+"Captain Macshane was born of respectable parents, in the town of
+Clonakilty, in Ireland, being descended from most of the kings in
+that country.  He had the honour of serving their Majesties King
+William and Queen Mary, and Her Majesty Queen Anne, in Flanders and
+Spain, and obtained much credit from my Lords Marlborough and
+Peterborough for his valour.
+
+"But being placed on half-pay at the end of the war, Ensign Macshane
+took to evil courses; and, frequenting the bagnios and dice-houses,
+was speedily brought to ruin.
+
+"Being at this pass, he fell in with the notorious Captain Wood, and
+they two together committed many atrocious robberies in the inland
+counties; but these being too hot to hold them, they went into the
+west, where they were unknown.  Here, however, the day of
+retribution arrived; for, having stolen three pewter-pots from a
+public-house, they, under false names, were tried at Exeter, and
+transported for seven years beyond the sea.  Thus it is seen that
+Justice never sleeps; but, sooner or latter, is sure to overtake the
+criminal.
+
+"On their return from Virginia, a quarrel about booty arose between
+these two, and Macshane killed Wood in a combat that took place
+between them near to the town of Bristol; but a waggon coming up,
+Macshane was obliged to fly without the ill-gotten wealth:  so true
+is it, that wickedness never prospers.
+
+"Two days afterwards, Macshane met the coach of Miss Macraw, a
+Scotch lady and heiress, going, for lumbago and gout, to the Bath.
+He at first would have robbed this lady; but such were his arts,
+that he induced her to marry him; and they lived together for seven
+years in the town of Eddenboro, in Scotland,--he passing under the
+name of Colonel Geraldine.  The lady dying, and Macshane having
+expended all her wealth, he was obliged to resume his former evil
+courses, in order to save himself from starvation; whereupon he
+robbed a Scotch lord, by name the Lord of Whistlebinkie, of a mull
+of snuff; for which crime he was condemned to the Tolbooth prison at
+Eddenboro, in Scotland, and whipped many times in publick.
+
+"These deserved punishments did not at all alter Captain Macshane's
+disposition; and on the 17th of February last, he stopped the
+Bavarian Envoy's coach on Blackheath, coming from Dover, and robbed
+his Excellency and his chaplain; taking from the former his money,
+watches, star, a fur-cloak, his sword (a very valuable one); and
+from the latter a Romish missal, out of which he was then reading,
+and a case-bottle."
+
+"The Bavarian Envoy!" said Tom parenthetically.  "My master,
+Beinkleider, was his Lordship's regimental tailor in Germany, and is
+now making a Court suit for him.  It will be a matter of a hundred
+pounds to him, I warrant."
+
+Doctor Wood resumed his reading.  "Hum--hum! A Romish missal, out of
+which he was reading, and a case-bottle.
+
+"By means of the famous Mr. Wild, this notorious criminal was
+brought to justice, and the case-bottle and missal have been
+restored to Father O'Flaherty.
+
+"During his confinement in Newgate, Mr. Macshane could not be
+brought to express any contrition for his crimes, except that of
+having killed his commanding officer.  For this Wood he pretended an
+excessive sorrow, and vowed that usquebaugh had been the cause of
+his death,--indeed, in prison he partook of no other liquor, and
+drunk a bottle of it on the day before his death.
+
+"He was visited by several of the clergy and gentry in his cell;
+among others, by the Popish priest whom he had robbed, Father
+O'FIaherty, before mentioned, who attended him likewise in his last
+moments (if that idolatrous worship may be called attention), and
+likewise by the Father's patron, the Bavarian Ambassador, his
+Excellency Count Maximilian de Galgenstein."
+
+As old Wood came to these words, he paused to give them utterance.
+
+"What!  Max?" screamed Mrs. Hayes, letting her ink-bottle fall over
+her ledgers.
+
+"Why, be hanged if it ben't my father!" said Mr. Billings.
+
+"Your father, sure enough, unless there be others of his name, and
+unless the scoundrel is hanged," said the Doctor--sinking his voice,
+however, at the end of the sentence.
+
+Mr. Billings broke his pipe in an agony of joy.  "I think we'll have
+the coach now, Mother," says he; "and I'm blessed if Polly Briggs
+shall not look as fine as a duchess."
+
+"Polly Briggs is a low slut, Tom, and not fit for the likes of you,
+his Excellency's son.  Oh, fie!  You must be a gentleman now,
+sirrah; and I doubt whether I shan't take you away from that odious
+tailor's shop altogether."
+
+To this proposition Mr. Billings objected altogether; for, besides
+Mrs. Briggs before alluded to, the young gentleman was much attached
+to his master's daughter, Mrs. Margaret Gretel, or Gretchen
+Beinkleider.
+
+"No," says he.  "There will be time to think of that hereafter,
+ma'am.  If my pa makes a man of me, why, of course, the shop may go
+to the deuce, for what I care; but we had better wait, look you, for
+something certain before we give up such a pretty bird in the hand
+as this."
+
+"He speaks like Solomon," said the Doctor.
+
+"I always said he would be a credit to his old mother, didn't I,
+Brock?" cried Mrs. Cat, embracing her son very affectionately.  "A
+credit to her; ay, I warrant, a real blessing!  And dost thou want
+any money, Tom? for a lord's son must not go about without a few
+pieces in his pocket.  And I tell thee, Tommy, thou must go and see
+his Lordship; and thou shalt have a piece of brocade for a
+waistcoat, thou shalt; ay, and the silver-hilted sword I told thee
+of; but oh, Tommy, Tommy! have a care, and don't be a-drawing of it
+in naughty company at the gaming-houses, or at the--"
+
+"A drawing of fiddlesticks, Mother!  If I go to see my father, I
+must have a reason for it; and instead of going with a sword in my
+hand, I shall take something else in it."
+
+"The lad IS a lad of nous," cried Doctor Wood, "although his mother
+does spoil him so cruelly.  Look you, Madam Cat:  did you not hear
+what he said about Beinkleider and the clothes?  Tommy will just
+wait on the Count with his Lordship's breeches.  A man may learn a
+deal of news in the trying on of a pair of breeches."
+
+And so it was agreed that in this manner the son should at first
+make his appearance before his father.  Mrs. Cat gave him the piece
+of brocade, which, in the course of the day, was fashioned into a
+smart waistcoat (for Beinkleider's shop was close by, in Cavendish
+Square).  Mrs. Gretel, with many blushes, tied a fine blue riband
+round his neck; and, in a pair of silk stockings, with gold buckles
+to his shoes, Master Billings looked a very proper young gentleman.
+
+"And, Tommy," said his mother, blushing and hesitating, "should
+Max--should his Lordship ask after your--want to know if your mother
+is alive, you can say she is, and well, and often talks of old
+times.  And, Tommy" (after another pause), "you needn't say anything
+about Mr. Hayes; only say I'm quite well."
+
+Mrs. Hayes looked at him as he marched down the street, a long long
+way.  Tom was proud and gay in his new costume, and was not unlike
+his father.  As she looked, lo! Oxford Street disappeared, and she
+saw a green common, and a village, and a little inn.  There was a
+soldier leading a pair of horses about on the green common; and in
+the inn sat a cavalier, so young, so merry, so beautiful!  Oh, what
+slim white hands he had; and winning words, and tender, gentle blue
+eyes!  Was it not an honour to a country lass that such a noble
+gentleman should look at her for a moment?  Had he not some charm
+about him that she must needs obey when he whispered in her ear,
+"Come, follow me!"  As she walked towards the lane that morning, how
+well she remembered each spot as she passed it, and the look it wore
+for the last time!  How the smoke was rising from the pastures, how
+the fish were jumping and plashing in the mill-stream!  There was
+the church, with all its windows lighted up with gold, and yonder
+were the reapers sweeping down the brown corn.  She tried to sing as
+she went up the hill--what was it?  She could not remember; but oh,
+how well she remembered the sound of the horse's hoofs, as they came
+quicker, quicker--nearer, nearer!  How noble he looked on his great
+horse!  Was he thinking of her, or were they all silly words which
+he spoke last night, merely to pass away the time and deceive poor
+girls with?  Would he remember them,--would he?
+
+"Cat my dear," here cried Mr. Brock, alias Captain, alias Doctor
+Wood, "here's the meat a-getting cold, and I am longing for my
+breakfast."
+
+As they went in he looked her hard in the face.  "What, still at it,
+you silly girl?  I've been watching you these five minutes, Cat; and
+be hanged but I think a word from Galgenstein, and you would follow
+him as a fly does a treacle-pot!"
+
+They went in to breakfast; but though there was a hot shoulder of
+mutton and onion-sauce--Mrs. Catherine's favourite dish--she never
+touched a morsel of it.
+
+In the meanwhile Mr. Thomas Billings, in his new clothes which his
+mamma had given him, in his new riband which the fair Miss
+Beinkleider had tied round his neck, and having his Excellency's
+breeches wrapped in a silk handkerchief in his right hand, turned
+down in the direction of Whitehall, where the Bavarian Envoy lodged.
+But, before he waited on him, Mr. Billings, being excessively
+pleased with his personal appearance, made an early visit to Mrs.
+Briggs, who lived in the neighbourhood of Swallow Street; and who,
+after expressing herself with much enthusiasm regarding her Tommy's
+good looks, immediately asked him what he would stand to drink?
+Raspberry gin being suggested, a pint of that liquor was sent for;
+and so great was the confidence and intimacy subsisting between
+these two young people, that the reader will be glad to hear that
+Mrs. Polly accepted every shilling of the money which Tom Billings
+had received from his mamma the day before; nay, could with
+difficulty be prevented from seizing upon the cut-velvet breeches
+which he was carrying to the nobleman for whom they were made.
+Having paid his adieux to Mrs. Polly, Mr. Billings departed to visit
+his father.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.  INTERVIEW BETWEEN COUNT GALGENSTEIN AND MASTER THOMAS
+BILLINGS, WHEN HE INFORMS THE COUNT OF HIS PARENTAGE.
+
+
+
+I don't know in all this miserable world a more miserable spectacle
+than that of a young fellow of five or six and forty.  The British
+army, that nursery of valour, turns out many of the young fellows I
+mean:  who, having flaunted in dragoon uniforms from seventeen to
+six-and-thirty; having bought, sold, or swapped during that period
+some two hundred horses; having played, say, fifteen thousand games
+at billiards; having drunk some six thousand bottles of wine; having
+consumed a reasonable number of Nugee coats, split many dozen pairs
+of high-heeled Hoby boots, and read the newspaper and the army-list
+duly, retire from the service when they have attained their eighth
+lustre, and saunter through the world, trailing from London to
+Cheltenham, and from Boulogne to Paris, and from Paris to Baden,
+their idleness, their ill-health, and their ennui.  "In the morning
+of youth," and when seen along with whole troops of their
+companions, these flowers look gaudy and brilliant enough; but there
+is no object more dismal than one of them alone, and in its
+autumnal, or seedy state.  My friend, Captain Popjoy, is one who has
+arrived at this condition, and whom everybody knows by his title of
+Father Pop.  A kinder, simpler, more empty-headed fellow does not
+exist.  He is forty-seven years old, and appears a young,
+good-looking man of sixty.  At the time of the Army of Occupation he
+really was as good-looking a man as any in the Dragoons.  He now
+uses all sorts of stratagems to cover the bald place on his head, by
+combing certain thin grey sidelocks over it.  He has, in revenge, a
+pair of enormous moustaches, which he dyes of the richest
+blue-black.  His nose is a good deal larger and redder than it used
+to be; his eyelids have grown flat and heavy; and a little pair of
+red, watery eyeballs float in the midst of them:  it seems as if the
+light which was once in those sickly green pupils had extravasated
+into the white part of the eye.  If Pop's legs are not so firm and
+muscular as they used to be in those days when he took such leaps
+into White's buckskins, in revenge his waist is much larger.  He
+wears a very good coat, however, and a waistband, which he lets out
+after dinner.  Before ladies he blushes, and is as silent as a
+schoolboy.  He calls them "modest women."  His society is chiefly
+among young lads belonging to his former profession.  He knows the
+best wine to be had at each tavern or cafe, and the waiters treat
+him with much respectful familiarity.  He knows the names of every
+one of them; and shouts out, "Send Markwell here!" or, "Tell
+Cuttriss to give us a bottle of the yellow seal!" or, "Dizzy voo,
+Monsure Borrel, noo donny shampang frappy," etc.  He always makes
+the salad or the punch, and dines out three hundred days in the
+year:  the other days you see him in a two-franc eating-house at
+Paris, or prowling about Rupert Street, or St. Martin's Court, where
+you get a capital cut of meat for eightpence.  He has decent
+lodgings and scrupulously clean linen; his animal functions are
+still tolerably well preserved, his spiritual have evaporated long
+since; he sleeps well, has no conscience, believes himself to be a
+respectable fellow, and is tolerably happy on the days when he is
+asked out to dinner.
+
+Poor Pop is not very high in the scale of created beings; but, if
+you fancy there is none lower, you are in egregious error.  There
+was once a man who had a mysterious exhibition of an animal, quite
+unknown to naturalists, called "the wusser."  Those curious
+individuals who desired to see the wusser were introduced into an
+apartment where appeared before them nothing more than a little lean
+shrivelled hideous blear-eyed mangy pig.  Everyone cried out
+"Swindle!" and "Shame!"  "Patience, gentlemen, be heasy," said the
+showman:  "look at that there hanimal; it's a perfect phenomaly of
+hugliness:  I engage you never see such a pig."  Nobody ever had
+seen.  "Now, gentlemen," said he, "I'll keep my promise, has per
+bill; and bad as that there pig is, look at this here" (he showed
+another).  "Look at this here, and you'll see at once that it's A
+WUSSER."  In like manner the Popjoy breed is bad enough, but it
+serves only to show off the Galgenstein race; which is WUSSER.
+
+Galgenstein had led a very gay life, as the saying is, for the last
+fifteen years; such a gay one, that he had lost all capacity of
+enjoyment by this time, and only possessed inclinations without
+powers of gratifying them.  He had grown to be exquisitely curious
+and fastidious about meat and drink, for instance, and all that he
+wanted was an appetite.  He carried about with him a French cook,
+who could not make him eat; a doctor, who could not make him well; a
+mistress, of whom he was heartily sick after two days; a priest, who
+had been a favourite of the exemplary Dubois, and by turns used to
+tickle him by the imposition of penance, or by the repetition of a
+tale from the recueil of Noce, or La Fare.  All his appetites were
+wasted and worn; only some monstrosity would galvanise them into
+momentary action.  He was in that effete state to which many
+noblemen of his time had arrived; who were ready to believe in
+ghost-raising or in gold-making, or to retire into monasteries and
+wear hair-shirts, or to dabble in conspiracies, or to die in love
+with little cook-maids of fifteen, or to pine for the smiles or at
+the frowns of a prince of the blood, or to go mad at the refusal of
+a chamberlain's key.  The last gratification he remembered to have
+enjoyed was that of riding bareheaded in a soaking rain for three
+hours by the side of his Grand Duke's mistress's coach; taking the
+pas of Count Krahwinkel, who challenged him, and was run through the
+body for this very dispute.  Galgenstein gained a rheumatic gout by
+it, which put him to tortures for many months; and was further
+gratified with the post of English Envoy.  He had a fortune, he
+asked no salary, and could look the envoy very well.  Father
+O'Flaherty did all the duties, and furthermore acted as a spy over
+the ambassador--a sinecure post, for the man had no feelings,
+wishes, or opinions--absolutely none.
+
+"Upon my life, father," said this worthy man, "I care for nothing.
+You have been talking for an hour about the Regent's death, and the
+Duchess of Phalaris, and sly old Fleury, and what not; and I care
+just as much as if you told me that one of my bauers at Galgenstein
+had killed a pig; or as if my lacquey, La Rose yonder, had made love
+to my mistress."
+
+"He does!" said the reverend gentleman.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur l'Abbe!" said La Rose, who was arranging his master's
+enormous Court periwig, "you are, helas! wrong.  Monsieur le Comte
+will not be angry at my saying that I wish the accusation were
+true."
+
+The Count did not take the slightest notice of La Rose's wit, but
+continued his own complaints.
+
+"I tell you, Abbe, I care for nothing.  I lost a thousand guineas
+t'other night at basset; I wish to my heart I could have been vexed
+about it.  Egad! I remember the day when to lose a hundred made me
+half mad for a month.  Well, next day I had my revenge at dice, and
+threw thirteen mains.  There was some delay; a call for fresh bones,
+I think; and would you believe it?--I fell asleep with the box in my
+hand!"
+
+"A desperate case, indeed," said the Abbe.
+
+"If it had not been for Krahwinkel, I should have been a dead man,
+that's positive.  That pinking him saved me."
+
+"I make no doubt of it," said the Abbe.  "Had your Excellency not
+run him through, he, without a doubt, would have done the same for
+you."
+
+"Psha! you mistake my words, Monsieur l'Abbe" (yawning).  "I
+mean--what cursed chocolate!--that I was dying for want of
+excitement.  Not that I cared for dying; no, d---- me if I do!"
+
+"WHEN you do, your Excellency means," said the Abbe, a fat
+grey-haired Irishman, from the Irlandois College at Paris.
+
+His Excellency did not laugh, nor understand jokes of any kind; he
+was of an undeviating stupidity, and only replied, "Sir, I mean what
+I say.  I don't care for living:  no, nor for dying either; but I
+can speak as well as another, and I'll thank you not to be
+correcting my phrases as if I were one of your cursed schoolboys,
+and not a gentleman of fortune and blood."
+
+Herewith the Count, who had uttered four sentences about himself (he
+never spoke of anything else), sunk back on his pillows again, quite
+exhausted by his eloquence.  The Abbe, who had a seat and a table by
+the bedside, resumed the labours which had brought him into the room
+in the morning, and busied himself with papers, which occasionally
+he handed over to his superior for approval.
+
+Presently Monsieur la Rose appeared.
+
+"Here is a person with clothes from Mr. Beinkleider's.  Will your
+Excellency see him, or shall I bid him leave the clothes?"
+
+The Count was very much fatigued by this time; he had signed three
+papers, and read the first half-a-dozen lines of a pair of them.
+
+"Bid the fellow come in, La Rose; and, hark ye, give me my wig:  one
+must show one's self to be a gentleman before these scoundrels."
+And he therefore mounted a large chestnut-coloured, orange-scented
+pyramid of horsehair, which was to awe the new-comer.
+
+He was a lad of about seventeen, in a smart waistcoat and a blue
+riband:  our friend Tom Billings, indeed.  He carried under his arm
+the Count's destined breeches.  He did not seem in the least awed,
+however, by his Excellency's appearance, but looked at him with a
+great degree of curiosity and boldness.  In the same manner he
+surveyed the chaplain, and then nodded to him with a kind look of
+recognition.
+
+"Where have I seen the lad?" said the father.  "Oh, I have it!  My
+good friend, you were at the hanging yesterday, I think?"
+
+Mr. Billings gave a very significant nod with his head.  "I never
+miss," said he.
+
+"What a young Turk!  And pray, sir, do you go for pleasure, or for
+business?"
+
+"Business! what do you mean by business?"
+
+"Oh, I did not know whether you might be brought up to the trade, or
+your relations be undergoing the operation."
+
+"My relations," said Mr. Billings, proudly, and staring the Count
+full in the face, "was not made for no such thing.  I'm a tailor
+now, but I'm a gentleman's son:  as good a man, ay, as his lordship
+there:  for YOU a'n't his lordship--you're the Popish priest you
+are; and we were very near giving you a touch of a few Protestant
+stones, master."
+
+The Count began to be a little amused:  he was pleased to see the
+Abbe look alarmed, or even foolish.
+
+"Egad, Abbe," said he, "you turn as white as a sheet."
+
+"I don't fancy being murdered, my Lord," said the Abbe, hastily;
+"and murdered for a good work.  It was but to be useful to yonder
+poor Irishman, who saved me as a prisoner in Flanders, when
+Marlborough would have hung me up like poor Macshane himself was
+yesterday."
+
+"Ah!" said the Count, bursting out with some energy, "I was thinking
+who the fellow could be, ever since he robbed me on the Heath.  I
+recollect the scoundrel now:  he was a second in a duel I had here
+in the year six."
+
+"Along with Major Wood, behind Montague House," said Mr. Billings.
+"I'VE heard on it."  And here he looked more knowing than ever.
+
+"YOU!" cried the Count, more and more surprised.  "And pray who the
+devil ARE you?"
+
+"My name's Billings."
+
+"Billings?" said the Count.
+
+"I come out of Warwickshire," said Mr. Billings.
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"I was born at Birmingham town."
+
+"Were you, really!"
+
+"My mother's name was Hayes," continued Billings, in a solemn voice.
+"I was put out to a nurse along with John Billings, a blacksmith;
+and my father run away.  NOW do you know who I am?"
+
+"Why, upon honour, now," said the Count, who was amused,--"upon
+honour, Mr. Billings, I have not that advantage."
+
+"Well, then, my Lord, YOU'RE MY FATHER!"
+
+Mr. Billings when he said this came forward to the Count with a
+theatrical air; and, flinging down the breeches of which he was the
+bearer, held out his arms and stared, having very little doubt but
+that his Lordship would forthwith spring out of bed and hug him to
+his heart.  A similar piece of naivete many fathers of families
+have, I have no doubt, remarked in their children; who, not caring
+for their parents a single doit, conceive, nevertheless, that the
+latter are bound to show all sorts of affection for them.  His
+lordship did move, but backwards towards the wall, and began pulling
+at the bell-rope with an expression of the most intense alarm.
+
+"Keep back, sirrah!--keep back!  Suppose I AM your father, do you
+want to murder me?  Good heavens! how the boy smells of gin and
+tobacco!  Don't turn away, my lad; sit down there at a proper
+distance.  And, La Rose, give him some eau-de-Cologne, and get a cup
+of coffee.  Well, now, go on with your story.  Egad, my dear Abbe, I
+think it is very likely that what the lad says is true."
+
+"If it is a family conversation," said the Abbe, "I had better leave
+you."
+
+"Oh, for Heaven's sake, no!  I could not stand the boy alone.  Now,
+Mister ah!--What's-your-name?  Have the goodness to tell your
+story."
+
+Mr. Billings was woefully disconcerted; for his mother and he had
+agreed that as soon as his father saw him he would be recognised at
+once, and, mayhap, made heir to the estates and title; in which
+being disappointed, he very sulkily went on with his narrative, and
+detailed many of those events with which the reader has already been
+made acquainted.  The Count asked the boy's mother's Christian name,
+and being told it, his memory at once returned to him.
+
+"What! are you little Cat's son?" said his Excellency.  "By heavens,
+mon cher Abbe, a charming creature, but a tigress--positively a
+tigress.  I recollect the whole affair now.  She's a little fresh
+black-haired woman, a'n't she? with a sharp nose and thick eyebrows,
+ay?  Ah yes, yes!" went on my Lord, "I recollect her, I recollect
+her.  It was at Birmingham I first met her:  she was my Lady
+Trippet's woman, wasn't she?"
+
+"She was no such thing," said Mr. Billings, hotly.  "Her aunt kept
+the 'Bugle Inn' on Waltham Green, and your Lordship seduced her."
+
+"Seduced her!  Oh, 'gad, so I did.  Stap me, now, I did.  Yes, I
+made her jump on my black horse, and bore her off like--like Aeneas
+bore his wife away from the siege of Rome! hey, l'Abbe?"
+
+"The events were precisely similar," said the Abbe.  "It is
+wonderful what a memory you have!"
+
+"I was always remarkable for it," continued his Excellency.  "Well,
+where was I,--at the black horse?  Yes, at the black horse.  Well, I
+mounted her on the black horse, and rode her en croupe, egad--ha,
+ha!--to Birmingham; and there we billed and cooed together like a
+pair of turtle-doves:  yes--ha!--that we did!"
+
+"And this, I suppose, is the end of some of the BILLINGS?" said the
+Abbe, pointing to Mr. Tom.
+
+"Billings! what do you mean?  Yes--oh--ah--a pun, a calembourg.  Fi
+donc, M. l'Abbe."  And then, after the wont of very stupid people,
+M. de Galgenstein went on to explain to the Abbe his own pun.
+"Well, but to proceed," cries he.  "We lived together at Birmingham,
+and I was going to be married to a rich heiress, egad! when what do
+you think this little Cat does?  She murders me, egad! and makes me
+manquer the marriage.  Twenty thousand, I think it was; and I wanted
+the money in those days.  Now, wasn't she an abominable monster,
+that mother of yours, hey, Mr. a--What's-your-name?"
+
+"She served you right!" said Mr. Billings, with a great oath,
+starting up out of all patience.
+
+"Fellow!" said his Excellency, quite aghast, "do you know to whom
+you speak?--to a nobleman of seventy-eight descents; a count of the
+Holy Roman Empire; a representative of a sovereign?  Ha, egad!
+Don't stamp, fellow, if you hope for my protection."
+
+"D--n your protection!" said Mr. Billings, in a fury.  "Curse you
+and your protection too!  I'm a free-born Briton, and no ---- French
+Papist!  And any man who insults my mother--ay, or calls me feller--
+had better look to himself and the two eyes in his head, I can tell
+him!"  And with this Mr. Billings put himself into the most approved
+attitude of the Cockpit, and invited his father, the reverend
+gentleman, and Monsieur la Rose the valet, to engage with him in a
+pugilistic encounter.  The two latter, the Abbe especially, seemed
+dreadfully frightened; but the Count now looked on with much
+interest; and, giving utterance to a feeble kind of chuckle, which
+lasted for about half a minute, said,--
+
+"Paws off, Pompey!  You young hangdog, you--egad, yes, aha! 'pon
+honour, you're a lad of spirit; some of your father's spunk in you,
+hey?  I know him by that oath.  Why, sir, when I was sixteen, I used
+to swear--to swear, egad, like a Thames waterman, and exactly in
+this fellow's way!  Buss me, my lad; no, kiss my hand.  That will
+do"--and he held out a very lean yellow hand, peering from a pair of
+yellow ruffles.  It shook very much, and the shaking made all the
+rings upon it shine only the more.
+
+"Well," says Mr. Billings, "if you wasn't a-going to abuse me nor
+mother, I don't care if I shake hands with you.  I ain't proud!"
+
+The Abbe laughed with great glee; and that very evening sent off to
+his Court a most ludicrous spicy description of the whole scene of
+meeting between this amiable father and child; in which he said that
+young Billings was the eleve favori of M. Kitch, Ecuyer, le bourreau
+de Londres, and which made the Duke's mistress laugh so much that
+she vowed that the Abbe should have a bishopric on his return:  for,
+with such store of wisdom, look you, my son, was the world governed
+in those days.
+
+The Count and his offspring meanwhile conversed with some
+cordiality.  The former informed the latter of all the diseases to
+which he was subject, his manner of curing them, his great
+consideration as chamberlain to the Duke of Bavaria; how he wore his
+Court suits, and of a particular powder which he had invented for
+the hair; how, when he was seventeen, he had run away with a
+canoness, egad! who was afterwards locked up in a convent, and grew
+to be sixteen stone in weight; how he remembered the time when
+ladies did not wear patches; and how the Duchess of Marlborough
+boxed his ears when he was so high, because he wanted to kiss her.
+
+All these important anecdotes took some time in the telling, and
+were accompanied by many profound moral remarks; such as, "I can't
+abide garlic, nor white-wine, stap me! nor Sauerkraut, though his
+Highness eats half a bushel per day.  I ate it the first time at
+Court; but when they brought it me a second time, I
+refused--refused, split me and grill me if I didn't!  Everybody
+stared; his Highness looked as fierce as a Turk; and that infernal
+Krahwinkel (my dear, I did for him afterwards)--that cursed
+Krahwinkel, I say, looked as pleased as possible, and whispered to
+Countess Fritsch, 'Blitzchen, Frau Grafinn,' says he, 'it's all over
+with Galgenstein.'  What did I do?  I had the entree, and demanded
+it.  'Altesse,' says I, falling on one knee, 'I ate no kraut at
+dinner to-day.  You remarked it:  I saw your Highness remark it.'
+
+"'I did, M.  le Comte,' said his Highness, gravely.
+
+"I had almost tears in my eyes; but it was necessary to come to a
+resolution, you know.  'Sir,' said I, 'I speak with deep grief to
+your Highness, who are my benefactor, my friend, my father; but of
+this I am resolved, I WILL NEVER EAT SAUERKRAUT MORE:  it don't
+agree with me.  After being laid up for four weeks by the last dish
+of Sauerkraut of which I partook, I may say with confidence--IT
+DON'T agree with me.  By impairing my health, it impairs my
+intellect, and weakens my strength; and both I would keep for your
+Highness's service.'
+
+"'Tut, tut!' said his Highness.  'Tut, tut, tut!'  Those were his
+very words.
+
+"'Give me my sword or my pen,' said I.  'Give me my sword or my pen,
+and with these Maximilian de Galgenstein is ready to serve you; but
+sure,--sure, a great prince will pity the weak health of a faithful
+subject, who does not know how to eat Sauerkraut?'  His Highness was
+walking about the room:  I was still on my knees, and stretched
+forward my hand to seize his coat.
+
+"'GEHT ZUM TEUFEL, Sir!' said he, in a loud voice (it means 'Go to
+the deuce,' my dear),--'Geht zum Teufel, and eat what you like!'
+With this he went out of the room abruptly; leaving in my hand one
+of his buttons, which I keep to this day.  As soon as I was alone,
+amazed by his great goodness and bounty, I sobbed aloud--cried like
+a child" (the Count's eyes filled and winked at the very
+recollection), "and when I went back into the card-room, stepping up
+to Krahwinkel, 'Count,' says I, 'who looks foolish now?'--Hey there,
+La Rose, give me the diamond--  Yes, that was the very pun I made,
+and very good it was thought.  'Krahwinkel,' says I, 'WHO LOOKS
+FOOLISH NOW?' and from that day to this I was never at a Court-day
+asked to eat Sauerkraut--NEVER!"
+
+"Hey there, La Rose!  Bring me that diamond snuff-box in the drawer
+of my secretaire;" and the snuff-box was brought.  "Look at it, my
+dear," said the Count, "for I saw you seemed to doubt.  There is the
+button--the very one that came off his Grace's coat."
+
+Mr. Billings received it, and twisted it about with a stupid air.
+The story had quite mystified him; for he did not dare yet to think
+his father was a fool--his respect for the aristocracy prevented
+him.
+
+When the Count's communications had ceased, which they did as soon
+as the story of the Sauerkraut was finished, a silence of some
+minutes ensued.  Mr. Billings was trying to comprehend the
+circumstances above narrated; his Lordship was exhausted; the
+chaplain had quitted the room directly the word Sauerkraut was
+mentioned--he knew what was coming.  His Lordship looked for some
+time at his son; who returned the gaze with his mouth wide open.
+"Well," said the Count--"well, sir?  What are you sitting there for?
+If you have nothing to say, sir, you had better go.  I had you here
+to amuse me--split me--and not to sit there staring!"
+
+Mr. Billings rose in a fury.
+
+"Hark ye, my lad," said the Count, "tell La Rose to give thee five
+guineas, and, ah--come again some morning.  A nice well-grown young
+lad," mused the Count, as Master Tommy walked wondering out of the
+apartment;  "a pretty fellow enough, and intelligent too."
+
+"Well, he IS an odd fellow, my father," thought Mr. Billings, as he
+walked out, having received the sum offered to him.  And he
+immediately went to call upon his friend Polly Briggs, from whom he
+had separated in the morning.
+
+What was the result of their interview is not at all necessary to
+the progress of this history.  Having made her, however, acquainted
+with the particulars of his visit to his father, he went to his
+mother's, and related to her all that had occurred.
+
+Poor thing, she was very differently interested in the issue of it!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.  SHOWING HOW GALGENSTEIN AND MRS. CAT RECOGNISE EACH
+OTHER IN MARYLEBONE GARDENS--AND HOW THE COUNT DRIVES HER HOME IN
+HIS CARRIAGE.
+
+
+
+About a month after the touching conversation above related, there
+was given, at Marylebone Gardens, a grand concert and entertainment,
+at which the celebrated Madame Amenaide, a dancer of the theatre at
+Paris, was to perform, under the patronage of several English and
+foreign noblemen; among whom was his Excellency the Bavarian Envoy.
+Madame Amenaide was, in fact, no other than the maitresse en titre
+of the Monsieur de Galgenstein, who had her a great bargain from the
+Duke de Rohan-Chabot at Paris.
+
+It is not our purpose to make a great and learned display here,
+otherwise the costumes of the company assembled at this fete might
+afford scope for at least half-a-dozen pages of fine writing; and we
+might give, if need were, specimens of the very songs and music sung
+on the occasion.  Does not the Burney collection of music, at the
+British Museum, afford one an ample store of songs from which to
+choose?  Are there not the memoirs of Colley Cibber? those of Mrs.
+Clark, the daughter of Colley?  Is there not Congreve, and
+Farquhar--nay, and at a pinch, the "Dramatic Biography," or even the
+Spectator, from which the observant genius might borrow passages,
+and construct pretty antiquarian figments?  Leave we these trifles
+to meaner souls!  Our business is not with the breeches and
+periwigs, with the hoops and patches, but with the divine hearts of
+men, and the passions which agitate them.  What need, therefore,
+have we to say that on this evening, after the dancing, the music,
+and the fireworks, Monsieur de Galgenstein felt the strange and
+welcome pangs of appetite, and was picking a cold chicken, along
+with some other friends in an arbour--a cold chicken, with an
+accompaniment of a bottle of champagne--when he was led to remark
+that a very handsome plump little person, in a gorgeous stiff damask
+gown and petticoat, was sauntering up and down the walk running
+opposite his supping-place, and bestowing continual glances towards
+his Excellency.  The lady, whoever she was, was in a mask, such as
+ladies of high and low fashion wore at public places in those days,
+and had a male companion.  He was a lad of only seventeen,
+marvellously well dressed--indeed, no other than the Count's own
+son, Mr. Thomas Billings; who had at length received from his mother
+the silver-hilted sword, and the wig, which that affectionate parent
+had promised to him.
+
+In the course of the month which had elapsed since the interview
+that has been described in the former chapter, Mr. Billings had
+several times had occasion to wait on his father; but though he had,
+according to her wishes, frequently alluded to the existence of his
+mother, the Count had never at any time expressed the slightest wish
+to renew his acquaintance with that lady; who, if she had seen him,
+had only seen him by stealth.
+
+The fact is, that after Billings had related to her the particulars
+of his first meeting with his Excellency; which ended, like many of
+the latter visits, in nothing at all; Mrs. Hayes had found some
+pressing business, which continually took her to Whitehall, and had
+been prowling from day to day about Monsieur de Galgenstein's
+lodgings.  Four or five times in the week, as his Excellency stepped
+into his coach, he might have remarked, had he chosen, a woman in a
+black hood, who was looking most eagerly into his eyes:  but those
+eyes had long since left off the practice of observing; and Madam
+Catherine's visits had so far gone for nothing.
+
+On this night, however, inspired by gaiety and drink, the Count had
+been amazingly stricken by the gait and ogling of the lady in the
+mask.  The Reverend O'Flaherty, who was with him, and had observed
+the figure in the black cloak, recognised, or thought he recognised,
+her.  "It is the woman who dogs your Excellency every day," said he.
+"She is with that tailor lad who loves to see people hanged--your
+Excellency's son, I mean."  And he was just about to warn the Count
+of a conspiracy evidently made against him, and that the son had
+brought, most likely, the mother to play her arts upon him--he was
+just about, I say, to show to the Count the folly and danger of
+renewing an old liaison with a woman such as he had described Mrs.
+Cat to be, when his Excellency, starting up, and interrupting his
+ghostly adviser at the very beginning of his sentence, said, "Egad,
+l'Abbe, you are right--it IS my son, and a mighty smart-looking
+creature with him.  Hey! Mr. What's-your-name--Tom, you rogue, don't
+you know your own father?"  And so saying, and cocking his beaver on
+one side, Monsieur de Galgenstein strutted jauntily after Mr.
+Billings and the lady.
+
+It was the first time that the Count had formally recognised his
+son.
+
+"Tom, you rogue," stopped at this, and the Count came up.  He had a
+white velvet suit, covered over with stars and orders, a neat modest
+wig and bag, and peach-coloured silk-stockings with silver clasps.
+The lady in the mask gave a start as his  Excellency came forward.
+"Law, mother, don't squeege so," said Tom.  The poor woman was
+trembling in every limb, but she had presence of mind to "squeege"
+Tom a great deal harder; and the latter took the hint, I suppose,
+and was silent.
+
+The splendid Count came up.  Ye gods, how his embroidery glittered
+in the lamps!  What a royal exhalation of musk and bergamot came
+from his wig, his handkerchief, and his grand lace ruffles and
+frills!  A broad yellow riband passed across his breast, and ended
+at his hip in a shining diamond cross--a diamond cross, and a
+diamond sword-hilt!  Was anything ever seen so beautiful?  And might
+not a poor woman tremble when such a noble creature drew near to
+her, and deigned, from the height of his rank and splendour, to look
+down upon her?  As Jove came down to Semele in state, in his habits
+of ceremony, with all the grand cordons of his orders blazing about
+his imperial person--thus dazzling, magnificent, triumphant, the
+great Galgenstein descended towards Mrs. Catherine.  Her cheeks
+glowed red-hot under her coy velvet mask, her heart thumped against
+the whalebone prison of her stays.  What a delicious storm of vanity
+was raging in her bosom!  What a rush of long-pent recollections
+burst forth at the sound of that enchanting voice!
+
+As you wind up a hundred-guinea chronometer with a twopenny
+watch-key--as by means of a dirty wooden plug you set all the waters
+of Versailles a-raging, and splashing, and storming--in like manner,
+and by like humble agents, were Mrs. Catherine's tumultuous passions
+set going.  The Count, we have said, slipped up to his son, and
+merely saying, "How do, Tom?" cut the young gentleman altogether,
+and passing round to the lady's side, said, "Madam, 'tis a charming
+evening--egad it is!"  She almost fainted:  it was the old voice.
+There he was, after seventeen years, once more at her side!
+
+Now I know what I could have done.  I can turn out a quotation from
+Sophocles (by looking to the index) as well as another:  I can throw
+off a bit of fine writing too, with passion, similes, and a moral at
+the end.  What, pray, is the last sentence but one but the very
+finest writing?  Suppose, for example, I had made Maximilian, as he
+stood by the side of Catherine, look up towards the clouds, and
+exclaim, in the words of the voluptuous Cornelius Nepos,
+
+     'Aenaoi nephelai
+     'Arthoomen phanerai
+      Droseran phusin euageetoi, k.t.l. *
+
+* Anglicised version of the author's original Greek text.
+
+Or suppose, again, I had said, in a style still more popular:--
+
+The Count advanced towards the maiden.  They both were mute for a
+while; and only the beating of her heart interrupted that thrilling
+and passionate silence.  Ah, what years of buried joys and fears,
+hopes and disappointments, arose from their graves in the far past,
+and in those brief moments flitted before the united ones!  How sad
+was that delicious retrospect, and oh, how sweet!  The tears that
+rolled down the cheek of each were bubbles from the choked and
+moss-grown wells of youth; the sigh that heaved each bosom had some
+lurking odours in it--memories of the fragrance of boyhood, echoes
+of the hymns of the young heart!  Thus is it ever--for these blessed
+recollections the soul always has a place; and while crime perishes,
+and sorrow is forgotten, the beautiful alone is eternal.
+
+"O golden legends, written in the skies!" mused De Galgenstein, "ye
+shine as ye did in the olden days!  WE change, but YE speak ever the
+same language.  Gazing in your abysmal depths, the feeble ratioci--"
+
+          *          *          *          *          *
+
+There, now, are six columns* of the best writing to be found in this
+or any other book.  Galgenstein has quoted Euripides thrice, Plato
+once, Lycophron nine times, besides extracts from the Latin syntax
+and the minor Greek poets.  Catherine's passionate embreathings are
+of the most fashionable order; and I call upon the ingenious critic
+of the X---- newspaper to say whether they do not possess the real
+impress of the giants of the olden time--the real Platonic smack, in
+a word?  Not that I want in the least to show off; but it is as
+well, every now and then, to show the public what one CAN do.
+
+(* There WERE six columns, as mentioned by the accurate Mr.
+Solomons; but we have withdrawn two pages and three-quarters,
+because, although our correspondent has been excessively eloquent,
+according to custom, we were anxious to come to the facts of the
+story.
+
+Mr. Solomons, by sending to our office, may have the cancelled
+passages.--O.Y.)
+
+Instead, however, of all this rant and nonsense, how much finer is
+the speech that the Count really did make!  "It is a very fine
+evening,--egad it is!"  The "egad" did the whole business:  Mrs. Cat
+was as much in love with him now as ever she had been; and,
+gathering up all her energies, she said, "It is dreadful hot too, I
+think;" and with this she made a curtsey.
+
+"Stifling, split me!" added his Excellency.  "What do you say,
+madam, to a rest in an arbour, and a drink of something cool?"
+
+"Sir!" said the lady, drawing back.
+
+"Oh, a drink--a drink by all means," exclaimed Mr. Billings, who was
+troubled with a perpetual thirst.  "Come, mo--, Mrs. Jones, I mean.
+you're fond of a glass of cold punch, you know; and the rum here is
+prime, I can tell you."
+
+The lady in the mask consented with some difficulty to the proposal
+of Mr. Billings, and was led by the two gentlemen into an arbour,
+where she was seated between them; and some wax-candles being
+lighted, punch was brought.
+
+She drank one or two glasses very eagerly, and so did her two
+companions; although it was evident to see, from the flushed looks
+of both of them, that they had little need of any such stimulus.
+The Count, in the midst of his champagne, it must be said, had been
+amazingly stricken and scandalised by the appearance of such a youth
+as Billings in a public place with a lady under his arm.  He was,
+the reader will therefore understand, in the moral stage of liquor;
+and when he issued out, it was not merely with the intention of
+examining Mr. Billings's female companion, but of administering to
+him some sound correction for venturing, at his early period of
+life, to form any such acquaintances.  On joining Billings, his
+Excellency's first step was naturally to examine the lady.  After
+they had been sitting for a while over their punch, he bethought him
+of his original purpose, and began to address a number of moral
+remarks to his son.
+
+We have already given some specimens of Monsieur de Galgenstein's
+sober conversation; and it is hardly necessary to trouble the reader
+with any further reports of his speeches.  They were intolerably
+stupid and dull; as egotistical as his morning lecture had been, and
+a hundred times more rambling and prosy.  If Cat had been in the
+possession of her sober senses, she would have seen in five minutes
+that her ancient lover was a ninny, and have left him with scorn;
+but she was under the charm of old recollections, and the sound of
+that silly voice was to her magical.  As for Mr. Billings, he
+allowed his Excellency to continue his prattle; only frowning,
+yawning, cursing occasionally, but drinking continually.
+
+So the Count descanted at length upon the enormity of young
+Billings's early liaisons; and then he told his own, in the year
+four, with a burgomaster's daughter at Ratisbon, when he was in the
+Elector of Bavaria's service--then, after Blenheim, when he had come
+over to the Duke of Marlborough, when a physician's wife at Bonn
+poisoned herself for him, etc. etc.; of a piece with the story of
+the canoness, which has been recorded before.  All the tales were
+true.  A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the
+ladies; but a handsome fool is irresistible.  Mrs. Cat listened and
+listened.  Good heavens! she had heard all these tales before, and
+recollected the place and the time--how she was hemming a
+handkerchief for Max; who came round and kissed her, vowing that the
+physician's wife was nothing compared to her--how he was tired, and
+lying on the sofa, just come home from shooting.  How handsome he
+looked!  Cat thought he was only the handsomer now; and looked more
+grave and thoughtful, the dear fellow!
+
+The garden was filled with a vast deal of company of all kinds, and
+parties were passing every moment before the arbour where our trio
+sat.  About half-an-hour after his Excellency had quitted his own
+box and party, the Rev. Mr. O'Flaherty came discreetly round, to
+examine the proceedings of his diplomatical chef.  The lady in the
+mask was listening with all her might; Mr. Billings was drawing
+figures on the table with punch; and the Count talking incessantly.
+The Father Confessor listened for a moment; and then, with something
+resembling an oath, walked away to the entry of the gardens, where
+his Excellency's gilt coach, with three footmen, was waiting to
+carry him back to London.  "Get me a chair, Joseph," said his
+Reverence, who infinitely preferred a seat gratis in the coach.
+"That fool," muttered he, "will not move for this hour."  The
+reverend gentleman knew that, when the Count was on the subject of
+the physician's wife, his discourses were intolerably long; and took
+upon himself, therefore, to disappear, along with the rest of the
+Count's party; who procured other conveyances, and returned to their
+homes.
+
+After this quiet shadow had passed before the Count's box, many
+groups of persons passed and repassed; and among them was no other
+than Mrs. Polly Briggs, to whom we have been already introduced.
+Mrs. Polly was in company with one or two other ladies, and leaning
+on the arm of a gentleman with large shoulders and calves, a fierce
+cock to his hat, and a shabby genteel air.  His name was Mr. Moffat,
+and his present occupation was that of doorkeeper at a gambling-
+house in Covent Garden; where, though he saw many thousands pass
+daily under his eyes, his own salary amounted to no more than
+four-and-sixpence weekly,--a sum quite insufficient to maintain him
+in the rank which he held.
+
+Mr. Moffat had, however, received some funds--amounting indeed, to a
+matter of twelve guineas--within the last month, and was treating
+Mrs. Briggs very generously to the concert.  It may be as well to
+say that every one of the twelve guineas had come out of Mrs.
+Polly's own pocket; who, in return, had received them from Mr.
+Billings.  And as the reader may remember that, on the day of
+Tommy's first interview with his father, he had previously paid a
+visit to Mrs. Briggs, having under his arm a pair of breeches, which
+Mrs. Briggs coveted--he should now be informed that she desired
+these breeches, not for pincushions, but for Mr. Moffat, who had
+long been in want of a pair.
+
+Having thus episodically narrated Mr. Moffat's history, let us state
+that he, his lady, and their friends, passed before the Count's
+arbour, joining in a melodious chorus to a song which one of the
+society, an actor of Betterton's, was singing:
+
+     "'Tis my will, when I'm dead, that no tear shall be shed,
+        No 'Hic jacet' be graved on my stone;
+      But pour o'er my ashes a bottle of red,
+        And say a good fellow is gone,
+            My brave boys!
+        And say a good fellow is gone."
+
+"My brave boys" was given with vast emphasis by the party; Mr.
+Moffat growling it in a rich bass, and Mrs. Briggs in a soaring
+treble.  As to the notes, when quavering up to the skies, they
+excited various emotions among the people in the gardens.  "Silence
+them blackguards!" shouted a barber, who was taking a pint of small
+beer along with his lady.  "Stop that there infernal screeching!"
+said a couple of ladies, who were sipping ratafia in company with
+two pretty fellows.
+
+"Dang it, it's Polly!" said Mr. Tom Billings, bolting out of the
+box, and rushing towards the sweet-voiced Mrs. Briggs.  When he
+reached her, which he did quickly, and made his arrival known by
+tipping Mrs. Briggs slightly on the waist, and suddenly bouncing
+down before her and her friend, both of the latter drew back
+somewhat startled.
+
+"Law, Mr. Billings!" says Mrs. Polly, rather coolly, "is it you?
+Who thought of seeing you here?"
+
+"Who's this here young feller?" says towering Mr. Moffat, with his
+bass voice.
+
+"It's Mr. Billings, cousin, a friend of mine," said Mrs. Polly,
+beseechingly.
+
+"Oh, cousin, if it's a friend of yours, he should know better how to
+conduct himself, that's all.  Har you a dancing-master, young
+feller, that you cut them there capers before gentlemen?" growled
+Mr. Moffat; who hated Mr. Billings, for the excellent reason that he
+lived upon him.
+
+"Dancing-master be hanged!" said Mr. Billings, with becoming spirit:
+"if you call me dancing-master, I'll pull your nose."
+
+"What!" roared Mr. Moffat, "pull my nose?  MY NOSE!  I'll tell you
+what, my lad, if you durst move me, I'll cut your throat, curse me!"
+
+"Oh, Moffy--cousin, I mean--'tis a shame to treat the poor boy so.
+Go away, Tommy; do go away; my cousin's in liquor," whimpered Madam
+Briggs, who really thought that the great doorkeeper would put his
+threat into execution.
+
+"Tommy!" said Mr. Moffat, frowning horribly; "Tommy to me too?  Dog,
+get out of my ssss---" SIGHT was the word which Mr. Moffat intended
+to utter; but he was interrupted; for, to the astonishment of his
+friends and himself, Mr. Billings did actually make a spring at the
+monster's nose, and caught it so firmly, that the latter could not
+finish his sentence.
+
+The operation was performed with amazing celerity; and, having
+concluded it, Mr. Billings sprang back, and whisked from out its
+sheath that new silver-hilted sword which his mamma had given him.
+"Now," said he, with a fierce kind of calmness, "now for the
+throat-cutting, cousin:  I'm your man!"
+
+How the brawl might have ended, no one can say, had the two
+gentlemen actually crossed swords; but Mrs. Polly, with a wonderful
+presence of mind, restored peace by exclaiming, "Hush, hush! the
+beaks, the beaks!"  Upon which, with one common instinct, the whole
+party made a rush for the garden gates, and disappeared into the
+fields.  Mrs. Briggs knew her company:  there was something in the
+very name of a constable which sent them all a-flying.
+
+After running a reasonable time, Mr. Billings stopped.  But the
+great Moffat was nowhere to be seen, and Polly Briggs had likewise
+vanished.  Then Tom bethought him that he would go back to his
+mother; but, arriving at the gate of the gardens, was refused
+admittance, as he had not a shilling in his pocket.  "I've left,"
+says Tommy, giving himself the airs of a gentleman, "some friends in
+the gardens.  I'm with his Excellency the Bavarian henvy."
+
+"Then you had better go away with him," said the gate people.
+
+"But I tell you I left him there, in the grand circle, with a lady;
+and, what's more, in the dark walk, I have left a silver-hilted
+sword."
+
+"Oh, my Lord, I'll go and tell him then," cried one of the porters,
+"if you will wait."
+
+Mr. Billings seated himself on a post near the gate, and there
+consented to remain until the return of his messenger.  The latter
+went straight to the dark walk, and found the sword, sure enough.
+But, instead of returning it to its owner this discourteous knight
+broke the trenchant blade at the hilt; and flinging the steel away,
+pocketed the baser silver metal, and lurked off by the private door
+consecrated to the waiters and fiddlers.
+
+In the meantime, Mr. Billings waited and waited.  And what was the
+conversation of his worthy parents inside the garden?  I cannot say;
+but one of the waiters declared that he had served the great foreign
+Count with two bowls of rack-punch, and some biscuits, in No. 3:
+that in the box with him were first a young gentleman, who went
+away, and a lady, splendidly dressed and masked:  that when the lady
+and his Lordship were alone, she edged away to the further end of
+the table, and they had much talk:  that at last, when his Grace had
+pressed her very much, she took off her mask and said, "Don't you
+know me now, Max?" that he cried out, "My own Catherine, thou art
+more beautiful than ever!" and wanted to kneel down and vow eternal
+love to her; but she begged him not to do so in a place where all
+the world would see:  that then his Highness paid, and they left the
+gardens, the lady putting on her mask again.
+
+When they issued from the gardens, "Ho! Joseph la Rose, my coach!"
+shouted his Excellency, in rather a husky voice; and the men who had
+been waiting came up with the carriage.  A young gentleman, who was
+dosing on one of the posts at the entry, woke up suddenly at the
+blaze of the torches and the noise of the footmen.  The Count gave
+his arm to the lady in the mask, who slipped in; and he was
+whispering La Rose, when the lad who had been sleeping hit his
+Excellency on the shoulder, and said, "I say, Count, you can give ME
+a cast home too," and jumped into the coach.
+
+When Catherine saw her son, she threw herself into his arms, and
+kissed him with a burst of hysterical tears; of which Mr. Billings
+was at a loss to understand the meaning.  The Count joined them,
+looking not a little disconcerted; and the pair were landed at their
+own door, where stood Mr. Hayes, in his nightcap, ready to receive
+them, and astounded at the splendour of the equipage in which his
+wife returned to him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.  OF SOME DOMESTIC QUARRELS, AND THE CONSEQUENCE THEREOF.
+
+
+
+An ingenious magazine-writer, who lived in the time of Mr. Brock and
+the Duke of Marlborough, compared the latter gentleman's conduct in
+battle, when he
+
+      "In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed,
+       To fainting squadrons lent the timely aid;
+       Inspired repulsed battalions to engage,
+       And taught the doubtful battle where to rage"--
+
+Mr. Joseph Addison, I say, compared the Duke of Marlborough to an
+angel, who is sent by Divine command to chastise a guilty people--
+
+      "And pleased his Master's orders to perform,
+       Rides on the whirlwind, and directs the storm."
+
+The first four of these novel lines touch off the Duke's disposition
+and genius to a tittle.  He had a love for such scenes of strife:
+in the midst of them his spirit rose calm and supreme, soaring (like
+an angel or not, but anyway the compliment is a very pretty one) on
+the battle-clouds majestic, and causing to ebb or to flow the mighty
+tide of war.
+
+But as this famous simile might apply with equal propriety--to a bad
+angel as to a good one, it may in like manner be employed to
+illustrate small quarrels as well as great--a little family
+squabble, in which two or three people are engaged, as well as a
+vast national dispute, argued on each side by the roaring throats of
+five hundred angry cannon.  The poet means, in fact, that the Duke
+of Marlborough had an immense genius for mischief.
+
+Our friend Brock, or Wood (whose actions we love to illustrate by
+the very handsomest similes), possessed this genius in common with
+his Grace; and was never so happy, or seen to so much advantage, as
+when he was employed in setting people by the ears.  His spirits,
+usually dull, then rose into the utmost gaiety and good-humour.
+When the doubtful battle flagged, he by his art would instantly
+restore it.  When, for instance, Tom's repulsed battalions of
+rhetoric fled from his mamma's fire, a few words of apt sneer or
+encouragement on Wood's part would bring the fight round again; or
+when Mr. Hayes's fainting squadrons of abuse broke upon the stubborn
+squares of Tom's bristling obstinacy, it was Wood's delight to rally
+the former, and bring him once more to the charge.  A great share
+had this man in making those bad people worse.  Many fierce words
+and bad passions, many falsehoods and knaveries on Tom's part, much
+bitterness, scorn, and jealousy on the part of Hayes and Catherine,
+might be attributed to this hoary old tempter, whose joy and
+occupation it was to raise and direct the domestic storms and
+whirlwinds of the family of which he was a member.  And do not let
+us be accused of an undue propensity to use sounding words, because
+we compare three scoundrels in the Tyburn Road to so many armies,
+and Mr. Wood to a mighty field-marshal.  My dear sir, when you have
+well studied the world--how supremely great the meanest thing in
+this world is, and how infinitely mean the greatest--I am mistaken
+if you do not make a strange and proper jumble of the sublime and
+the ridiculous, the lofty and the low.  I have looked at the world,
+for my part, and come to the conclusion that I know not which is
+which.
+
+Well, then, on the night when Mrs Hayes, as recorded by us, had been
+to the Marylebone Gardens, Mr. Wood had found the sincerest
+enjoyment in plying her husband with drink; so that, when Catherine
+arrived at home, Mr. Hayes came forward to meet her in a manner
+which showed he was not only surly, but drunk.  Tom stepped out of
+the coach first; and Hayes asked him, with an oath, where he had
+been?  The oath Mr. Billings sternly flung back again (with another
+in its company), and at the same time refused to give his stepfather
+any sort of answer to his query.
+
+"The old man is drunk, mother," said he to Mrs. Hayes, as he handed
+that lady out of the coach (before leaving which she had to withdraw
+her hand rather violently from the grasp of the Count, who was
+inside).  Hayes instantly showed the correctness of his surmise by
+slamming the door courageously in Tom's face, when he attempted to
+enter the house with his mother.  And when Mrs. Catherine
+remonstrated, according to her wont, in a very angry and
+supercilious tone, Mr. Hayes replied with equal haughtiness, and a
+regular quarrel ensued.
+
+People were accustomed in those days to use much more simple and
+expressive terms of language than are now thought polite; and it
+would be dangerous to give, in this present year 1840, the exact
+words of reproach which passed between Hayes and his wife in 1726.
+Mr. Wood sat near, laughing his sides out.  Mr. Hayes swore that his
+wife should not go abroad to tea-gardens in search of vile Popish
+noblemen; to which Mrs. Hayes replied, that Mr. Hayes was a pitiful,
+lying, sneaking cur, and that she would go where she pleased.  Mr.
+Hayes rejoined that if she said much more he would take a stick to
+her.  Mr. Wood whispered, "And serve her right."  Mrs. Hayes
+thereupon swore she had stood his cowardly blows once or twice
+before, but that if ever he did so again, as sure as she was born,
+she would stab him.  Mr. Wood said, "Curse me, but I like her
+spirit."
+
+Mr. Hayes took another line of argument, and said, "The neighbours
+would talk, madam."
+
+"Ay, that they will, no doubt," said Mr. Wood.
+
+"Then let them," said Catherine.  "What do we care about the
+neighbours?  Didn't the neighbours talk when you sent Widow Wilkins
+to gaol?  Didn't the neighbours talk when you levied on poor old
+Thomson?  You didn't mind THEN, Mr, Hayes."
+
+"Business, ma'am, is business; and if I did distrain on Thomson, and
+lock up Wilkins, I think you knew about it as much as I."
+
+"I'faith, I believe you're a pair," said Mr. Wood.
+
+"Pray, sir, keep your tongue to yourself.  Your opinion isn't asked
+anyhow--no, nor your company wanted neither," cried Mrs. Catherine,
+with proper spirit.
+
+At which remark Mr. Wood only whistled.
+
+"I have asked this here gentleman to pass this evening along with
+me.  We've been drinking together, ma'am."
+
+"That we have", said Mr. Wood, looking at Mrs. Cat with the most
+perfect good-humour.
+
+"I say, ma'am, that we've been a-drinking together; and when we've
+been a-drinking together, I say that a man is my friend.  Doctor
+Wood is my friend, madam--the Reverend Doctor Wood.  We've passed
+the evening in company, talking about politics, madam--politics and
+riddle-iddle-igion.  We've not been flaunting in tea-gardens, and
+ogling the men."
+
+"It's a lie!" shrieked Mrs. Hayes.  "I went with Tom--you know I
+did:  the boy wouldn't let me rest till I promised to go."
+
+"Hang him, I hate him," said Mr. Hayes:  "he's always in my way."
+
+"He's the only friend I have in the world, and the only being I care
+a pin for," said Catherine.
+
+"He's an impudent idle good-for-nothing scoundrel, and I hope to see
+him hanged!" shouted Mr. Hayes.  "And pray, madam, whose carriage
+was that as you came home in?  I warrant you paid something for the
+ride--ha, ha!"
+
+"Another lie!" screamed Cat, and clutched hold of a supper-knife.
+"Say it again, John Hayes, and, by ------ I'll do for you."
+
+"Do for me?  Hang me," said Mr. Hayes, flourishing a stick, and
+perfectly pot-valiant, "do you think I care for a bastard and a--?"
+
+He did not finish the sentence, for the woman ran at him like a
+savage, knife in hand.  He bounded back, flinging his arms about
+wildly, and struck her with his staff sharply across the forehead.
+The woman went down instantly.  A lucky blow was it for Hayes and
+her:  it saved him from death, perhaps, and her from murder.
+
+All this scene--a very important one of our drama--might have been
+described at much greater length; but, in truth, the author has a
+natural horror of dwelling too long upon such hideous spectacles:
+nor would the reader be much edified by a full and accurate
+knowledge of what took place.  The quarrel, however, though not more
+violent than many that had previously taken place between Hayes and
+his wife, was about to cause vast changes in the condition of this
+unhappy pair.
+
+Hayes was at the first moment of his victory very much alarmed; he
+feared that he had killed the woman; and Wood started up rather
+anxiously too, with the same fancy.  But she soon began to recover.
+Water was brought; her head was raised and bound up; and in a short
+time Mrs. Catherine gave vent to a copious fit of tears, which
+relieved her somewhat.  These did not affect Hayes much--they rather
+pleased him, for he saw he had got the better; and although Cat
+fiercely turned upon him when he made some small attempt towards
+reconciliation, he did not heed her anger, but smiled and winked in
+a self-satisfied way at Wood.  The coward was quite proud of his
+victory; and finding Catherine asleep, or apparently so, when he
+followed her to bed, speedily gave himself up to slumber too, and
+had some pleasant dreams to his portion.
+
+Mr. Wood also went sniggering and happy upstairs to his chamber.
+The quarrel had been a real treat to him; it excited the old man-
+-tickled him into good-humour; and he promised himself a rare
+continuation of the fun when Tom should be made acquainted with the
+circumstances of the dispute.  As for his Excellency the Count, the
+ride from Marylebone Gardens, and a tender squeeze of the hand,
+which Catherine permitted to him on parting, had so inflamed the
+passions of the nobleman, that, after sleeping for nine hours, and
+taking his chocolate as usual the next morning, he actually delayed
+to read the newspaper, and kept waiting a toy-shop lady from
+Cornhill (with the sweetest bargain of Mechlin lace), in order to
+discourse to his chaplain on the charms of Mrs. Hayes.
+
+She, poor thing, never closed her lids, except when she would have
+had Mr. Hayes imagine that she slumbered; but lay beside him,
+tossing and tumbling, with hot eyes wide open and heart thumping,
+and pulse of a hundred and ten, and heard the heavy hours tolling;
+and at last the day came peering, haggard, through the
+window-curtains, and found her still wakeful and wretched.
+
+Mrs. Hayes had never been, as we have seen, especially fond of her
+lord; but now, as the day made visible to her the sleeping figure
+and countenance of that gentleman, she looked at him with a contempt
+and loathing such as she had never felt even in all the years of her
+wedded life.  Mr. Hayes was snoring profoundly:  by his bedside, on
+his ledger, stood a large greasy tin candlestick, containing a lank
+tallow-candle, turned down in the shaft; and in the lower part, his
+keys, purse, and tobacco-pipe; his feet were huddled up in his
+greasy threadbare clothes; his head and half his sallow face muffled
+up in a red woollen nightcap; his beard was of several days' growth;
+his mouth was wide open, and he was snoring profoundly:  on a more
+despicable little creature the sun never shone.  And to this sordid
+wretch was Catherine united for ever.  What a pretty rascal history
+might be read in yonder greasy day-book, which never left the
+miser!--he never read in any other.  Of what a treasure were yonder
+keys and purse the keepers! not a shilling they guarded but was
+picked from the pocket of necessity, plundered from needy
+wantonness, or pitilessly squeezed from starvation.  "A fool, a
+miser, and a coward!  Why was I bound to this wretch?" thought
+Catherine:  "I, who am high-spirited and beautiful (did not HE tell
+me so?); I who, born a beggar, have raised myself to competence, and
+might have mounted--who knows whither?--if cursed Fortune had not
+baulked me!"
+
+As Mrs. Cat did not utter these sentiments, but only thought them,
+we have a right to clothe her thoughts in the genteelest possible
+language; and, to the best of our power, have done so.  If the
+reader examines Mrs. Hayes's train of reasoning, he will not, we
+should think, fail to perceive how ingeniously she managed to fix
+all the wrong upon her husband, and yet to twist out some
+consolatory arguments for her own vanity.  This perverse
+argumentation we have all of us, no doubt, employed in our time.
+How often have we,--we poets, politicians, philosophers,
+family-men,--found charming excuses for our own rascalities in the
+monstrous wickedness of the world about us; how loudly have we
+abused the times and our neighbours!  All this devil's logic did
+Mrs. Catherine, lying wakeful in her bed on the night of the
+Marylebone fete, exert in gloomy triumph.
+
+It must, however, be confessed, that nothing could be more just than
+Mrs. Hayes's sense of her husband's scoundrelism and meanness; for
+if we have not proved these in the course of this history, we have
+proved nothing.  Mrs. Cat had a shrewd observing mind; and if she
+wanted for proofs against Hayes, she had but to look before and
+about her to find them.  This amiable pair were lying in a large
+walnut-bed, with faded silk furniture, which had been taken from
+under a respectable old invalid widow, who had become security for a
+prodigal son; the room was hung round with an antique tapestry
+(representing Rebecca at the Well, Bathsheba Bathing, Judith and
+Holofernes, and other subjects from Holy Writ), which had been many
+score times sold for fifty pounds, and bought back by Mr. Hayes for
+two, in those accommodating bargains which he made with young
+gentlemen, who received fifty pounds of money and fifty of tapestry
+in consideration of their hundred-pound bills.  Against this
+tapestry, and just cutting off Holofernes's head, stood an enormous
+ominous black clock, the spoil of some other usurious transaction.
+Some chairs, and a dismal old black cabinet, completed the furniture
+of this apartment:  it wanted but a ghost to render its gloom
+complete.
+
+Mrs. Hayes sat up in the bed sternly regarding her husband.  There
+is, be sure, a strong magnetic influence in wakeful eyes so
+examining a sleeping person (do not you, as a boy, remember waking
+of bright summer mornings and finding your mother looking over you?
+had not the gaze of her tender eyes stolen into your senses long
+before you woke, and cast over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell
+of peace, and love, and fresh springing joy?)  Some such influence
+had Catherine's looks upon her husband:  for, as he slept under
+them, the man began to writhe about uneasily, and to burrow his head
+in the pillow, and to utter quick, strange moans and cries, such as
+have often jarred one's ear while watching at the bed of the
+feverish sleeper.  It was just upon six, and presently the clock
+began to utter those dismal grinding sounds, which issue from clocks
+at such periods, and which sound like the death-rattle of the
+departing hour.  Then the bell struck the knell of it; and with this
+Mr. Hayes awoke, and looked up, and saw Catherine gazing at him.
+
+Their eyes met for an instant, and Catherine turned away, burning
+red, and looking as if she had been caught in the commission of a
+crime.
+
+A kind of blank terror seized upon old Hayes's soul:  a horrible icy
+fear, and presentiment of coming evil; and yet the woman had but
+looked at him.  He thought rapidly over the occurrences of the last
+night, the quarrel, and the end of it.  He had often struck her
+before when angry, and heaped all kinds of bitter words upon her;
+but, in the morning, she bore no malice, and the previous quarrel
+was forgotten, or, at least, passed over.  Why should the last
+night's dispute not have the same end?  Hayes calculated all this,
+and tried to smile.
+
+"I hope we're friends, Cat?" said he.  "You know I was in liquor
+last night, and sadly put out by the loss of that fifty pound.
+They'll ruin me, dear--I know they will."
+
+Mrs. Hayes did not answer.
+
+"I should like to see the country again, dear," said he, in his most
+wheedling way.  "I've a mind, do you know, to call in all our money?
+It's you who've made every farthing of it, that's sure; and it's a
+matter of two thousand pound by this time.  Suppose we go into
+Warwickshire, Cat, and buy a farm, and live genteel.  Shouldn't you
+like to live a lady in your own county again?  How they'd stare at
+Birmingham! hey, Cat?"
+
+And with this Mr. Hayes made a motion as if he would seize his
+wife's hand, but she flung his back again.
+
+"Coward!" said she, "you want liquor to give you courage, and then
+you've only heart enough to strike women."
+
+"It was only in self-defence, my dear," said Hayes, whose courage
+had all gone.  "You tried, you know, to--to--"
+
+"To STAB you, and I wish I had!" said Mrs. Hayes, setting her teeth,
+and glaring at him like a demon; and so saying she sprung out of
+bed.  There was a great stain of blood on her pillow.  "Look at it,"
+said she.  "That blood's of your shedding!" and at this Hayes fairly
+began to weep, so utterly downcast and frightened was the miserable
+man.  The wretch's tears only inspired his wife with a still greater
+rage and loathing; she cared not so much for the blow, but she hated
+the man:  the man to whom she was tied for ever--for ever!  The bar
+between her and wealth, happiness, love, rank perhaps.  "If I were
+free," thought Mrs. Hayes (the thought had been sitting at her
+pillow all night, and whispering ceaselessly into her ear)--,"If I
+were free, Max would marry me; I know he would:--he said so
+yesterday!"
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+As if by a kind of intuition, old Wood seemed to read all this
+woman's thoughts; for he said that day with a sneer, that he would
+wager she was thinking how much better it would be to be a Count's
+lady than a poor miser's wife.  "And faith," said he, "a Count and a
+chariot-and-six is better than an old skinflint with a cudgel."  And
+then he asked her if her head was better, and supposed that she was
+used to beating; and cut sundry other jokes, which made the poor
+wretch's wounds of mind and body feel a thousand times sorer.
+
+Tom, too, was made acquainted with the dispute, and swore his
+accustomed vengeance against his stepfather.  Such feelings, Wood,
+with a dexterous malice, would never let rest; it was his joy, at
+first quite a disinterested one, to goad Catherine and to frighten
+Hayes:  though, in truth, that unfortunate creature had no occasion
+for incitements from without to keep up the dreadful state of terror
+and depression into which he had fallen.
+
+For, from the morning after the quarrel, the horrible words and
+looks of Catherine never left Hayes's memory; but a cold fear
+followed him--a dreadful prescience.  He strove to overcome this
+fate as a coward would--to kneel to it for compassion--to coax and
+wheedle it into forgiveness.  He was slavishly gentle to Catherine,
+and bore her fierce taunts with mean resignation.  He trembled
+before young Billings, who was now established in the house (his
+mother said, to protect her against the violence of her husband),
+and suffered his brutal language and conduct without venturing to
+resist.
+
+The young man and his mother lorded over the house:  Hayes hardly
+dared to speak in their presence; seldom sat with the family except
+at meals; but slipped away to his chamber (he slept apart now from
+his wife) or passed the evening at the public-house, where he was
+constrained to drink--to spend some of his beloved sixpences for
+drink!
+
+And, of course, the neighbours began to say, "John Hayes neglects
+his wife."  "He tyrannises over her, and beats her."  "Always at the
+public-house, leaving an honest woman alone at home!"
+
+The unfortunate wretch did NOT hate his wife.  He was used to
+her--fond of her as much as he could be fond--sighed to be friends
+with her again--repeatedly would creep, whimpering, to Wood's room,
+when the latter was alone, and begged him to bring about a
+reconciliation.  They WERE reconciled, as much as ever they could
+be.  The woman looked at him, thought what she might be but for him,
+and scorned and loathed him with a feeling that almost amounted to
+insanity.  What nights she lay awake, weeping, and cursing herself
+and him!  His humility and beseeching looks only made him more
+despicable and hateful to her.
+
+If Hayes did not hate the mother, however, he hated the boy--hated
+and feared him dreadfully.  He would have poisoned him if he had had
+the courage; but he dared not:  he dared not even look at him as he
+sat there, the master of the house, in insolent triumph.  O God! how
+the lad's brutal laughter rung in Hayes's ears; and how the stare of
+his fierce bold black eyes pursued him!  Of a truth, if Mr. Wood
+loved mischief, as he did, honestly and purely for mischief's sake,
+he had enough here.  There was mean malice, and fierce scorn, and
+black revenge, and sinful desire, boiling up in the hearts of these
+wretched people, enough to content Mr. Wood's great master himself.
+
+Hayes's business, as we have said, was nominally that of a
+carpenter; but since, for the last few years, he had added to it
+that of a lender of money, the carpenter's trade had been neglected
+altogether for one so much more profitable.  Mrs. Hayes had exerted
+herself, with much benefit to her husband, in his usurious business.
+She was a resolute, clear-sighted, keen woman, that did not love
+money, but loved to be rich and push her way in the world.  She
+would have nothing to do with the trade now, however, and told her
+husband to manage it himself.  She felt that she was separated from
+him for ever, and could no more be brought to consider her interests
+as connected with his own.
+
+The man was well fitted for the creeping and niggling of his
+dastardly trade; and gathered his moneys, and busied himself with
+his lawyer, and acted as his own bookkeeper and clerk, not without
+satisfaction.  His wife's speculations, when they worked in concert,
+used often to frighten him.  He never sent out his capital without a
+pang, and only because he dared not question her superior judgment
+and will.  He began now to lend no more:  he could not let the money
+out of his sight.  His sole pleasure was to creep up into his room,
+and count and recount it.  When Billings came into the house, Hayes
+had taken a room next to that of Wood.  It was a protection to him;
+for Wood would often rebuke the lad for using Hayes ill:  and both
+Catherine and Tom treated the old man with deference.
+
+At last--it was after he had collected a good deal of his money--
+Hayes began to reason with himself, "Why should I stay?--stay to be
+insulted by that boy, or murdered by him?  He is ready for any
+crime."  He determined to fly.  He would send Catherine money every
+year.  No--she had the furniture; let her let lodgings--that would
+support her.  He would go, and live away, abroad in some cheap
+place--away from that boy and his horrible threats.  The idea of
+freedom was agreeable to the poor wretch; and he began to wind up
+his affairs as quickly as he could.
+
+Hayes would now allow no one to make his bed or enter his room; and
+Wood could hear him through the panels fidgeting perpetually to and
+fro, opening and shutting of chests, and clinking of coin.  At the
+least sound he would start up, and would go to Billings's door and
+listen.  Wood used to hear him creeping through the passages, and
+returning stealthily to his own chamber.
+
+One day the woman and her son had been angrily taunting him in the
+presence of a neighbour.  The neighbour retired soon; and Hayes, who
+had gone with him to the door, heard, on returning, the voice of
+Wood in the parlour.  The old man laughed in his usual saturnine
+way, and said, "Have a care, Mrs. Cat; for if Hayes were to die
+suddenly, by the laws, the neighbours would accuse thee of his
+death."
+
+Hayes started as if he had been shot.  "He too is in the plot,"
+thought he.  "They are all leagued against me:  they WILL kill me:
+they are only biding their time."  Fear seized him, and he thought
+of flying that instant and leaving all; and he stole into his room
+and gathered his money together.  But only a half of it was there:
+in a few weeks all would have come in.  He had not the heart to go.
+But that night Wood heard Hayes pause at HIS door, before he went to
+listen at Mrs. Catherine's.  "What is the man thinking of?" said
+Wood.  "He is gathering his money together.  Has he a hoard yonder
+unknown to us all?"
+
+Wood thought he would watch him.  There was a closet between the two
+rooms:  Wood bored a hole in the panel, and peeped through.  Hayes
+had a brace of pistols, and four or five little bags before him on
+the table.  One of these he opened, and placed, one by one,
+five-and-twenty guineas into it.  Such a sum had been due that
+day--Catherine spoke of it only in the morning; for the debtor's
+name had by chance been mentioned in the conversation.  Hayes
+commonly kept but a few guineas in the house.  For what was he
+amassing all these?  The next day, Wood asked for change for a
+twenty-pound bill.  Hayes said he had but three guineas.  And, when
+asked by Catherine where the money was that was paid the day before,
+said that it was at the banker's.  "The man is going to fly," said
+Wood; "that is sure:  if he does, I know him--he will leave his wife
+without a shilling."
+
+He watched him for several days regularly:  two or three more bags
+were added to the former number.  "They are pretty things, guineas,"
+thought Wood, "and tell no tales, like bank-bills."  And he thought
+over the days when he and Macshane used to ride abroad in search of
+them.
+
+I don't know what thoughts entered into Mr. Wood's brain; but the
+next day, after seeing young Billings, to whom he actually made a
+present of a guinea, that young man, in conversing with his mother,
+said, "Do you know, mother, that if you were free, and married the
+Count, I should be a lord?  It's the German law, Mr. Wood says; and
+you know he was in them countries with Marlborough."
+
+"Ay, that he would," said Mr. Wood, "in Germany:  but Germany isn't
+England; and it's no use talking of such things."
+
+"Hush, child!" said Mrs. Hayes, quite eagerly:  "how can _I_ marry
+the Count?  Besides, a'n't I married, and isn't he too great a lord
+for me?"
+
+"Too great a lord?--not a whit, mother.  If it wasn't for Hayes, I
+might be a lord now.  He gave me five guineas only last week; but
+curse the skinflint who never will part with a shilling."
+
+"It's not so bad as his striking your mother, Tom.  I had my stick
+up, and was ready to fell him t'other night," added Mr. Wood.  And
+herewith he smiled, and looked steadily in Mrs. Catherine's face.
+She dared not look again; but she felt that the old man knew a
+secret that she had been trying to hide from herself.  Fool! he knew
+it; and Hayes knew it dimly:  and never, never, since that day of
+the gala, had it left her, sleeping or waking.  When Hayes, in his
+fear, had proposed to sleep away from her, she started with joy:
+she had been afraid that she might talk in her sleep, and so let
+slip her horrible confession.
+
+Old Wood knew all her history since the period of the Marylebone
+fete.  He had wormed it out of her, day by day; he had counselled
+her how to act; warned her not to yield; to procure, at least, a
+certain provision for her son, and a handsome settlement for
+herself, if she determined on quitting her husband.  The old man
+looked on the business in a proper philosophical light, told her
+bluntly that he saw she was bent upon going off with the Count, and
+bade her take precautions:  else she might be left as she had been
+before.
+
+Catherine denied all these charges; but she saw the Count daily,
+notwithstanding, and took all the measures which Wood had
+recommended to her.  They were very prudent ones.  Galgenstein grew
+hourly more in love:  never had he felt such a flame; not in the
+best days of his youth; not for the fairest princess, countess, or
+actress, from Vienna to Paris.
+
+At length--it was the night after he had seen Hayes counting his
+money-bags--old Wood spoke to Mrs. Hayes very seriously.  "That
+husband of yours, Cat," said he, "meditates some treason; ay, and
+fancies we are about such.  He listens nightly at your door and at
+mine:  he is going to leave you, be sure on't; and if he leaves you,
+he leaves you to starve."
+
+"I can be rich elsewhere," said Mrs. Cat.
+
+"What, with Max?"
+
+"Ay, with Max:  and why not?" said Mrs. Hayes.
+
+"Why not, fool!  Do you recollect Birmingham?  Do you think that
+Galgenstein, who is so tender now because he HASN'T won you, will be
+faithful because he HAS?  Psha, woman, men are not made so!  Don't
+go to him until you are sure:  if you were a widow now, he would
+marry you; but never leave yourself at his mercy:  if you were to
+leave your husband to go to him, he would desert you in a
+fortnight!"
+
+She might have been a Countess! she knew she might, but for this
+cursed barrier between her and her fortune.  Wood knew what she was
+thinking of, and smiled grimly.
+
+"Besides," he continued, "remember Tom.  As sure as you leave Hayes
+without some security from Max, the boy's ruined:  he who might be a
+lord, if his mother had but--Psha! never mind:  that boy will go on
+the road, as sure as my name's Wood.  He's a Turpin cock in his eye,
+my dear,--a regular Tyburn look.  He knows too many of that sort
+already; and is too fond of a bottle and a girl to resist and be
+honest when it comes to the pinch."
+
+"It's all true," said Mrs. Hayes.  "Tom's a high mettlesome fellow,
+and would no more mind a ride on Hounslow Heath than he does a walk
+now in the Mall."
+
+"Do you want him hanged, my dear?" said Wood.
+
+"Ah, Doctor!"
+
+"It IS a pity, and that's sure," concluded Mr. Wood, knocking the
+ashes out of his pipe, and closing this interesting conversation.
+"It is a pity that that old skinflint should be in the way of both
+your fortunes; and he about to fling you over, too!"
+
+Mrs. Catherine retired musing, as Mr. Billings had previously done;
+a sweet smile of contentment lighted up the venerable features of
+Doctor Wood, and he walked abroad into the streets as happy a fellow
+as any in London.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.  TREATS OF LOVE, AND PREPARES FOR DEATH.
+
+
+
+And to begin this chapter, we cannot do better than quote a part of
+a letter from M. l'Abbe O'Flaherty to Madame la Comtesse de X-----
+at Paris:
+
+"MADAM,--The little Arouet de Voltaire, who hath come 'hither to
+take a turn in England,' as I see by the Post of this morning, hath
+brought me a charming pacquet from your Ladyship's hands, which
+ought to render a reasonable man happy; but, alas! makes your slave
+miserable.  I think of dear Paris (and something more dear than all
+Paris, of which, Madam, I may not venture to speak further)--I think
+of dear Paris, and find myself in this dismal Vitehall, where, when
+the fog clears up, I can catch a glimpse of muddy Thames, and of
+that fatal palace which the kings of England have been obliged to
+exchange for your noble castle of Saint Germains, that stands so
+stately by silver Seine.  Truly, no bad bargain.  For my part, I
+would give my grand ambassadorial saloons, hangings, gildings,
+feasts, valets, ambassadors and all, for a bicoque in sight of the
+Thuilleries' towers, or my little cell in the Irlandois.
+
+"My last sheets have given you a pretty notion of our ambassador's
+public doings; now for a pretty piece of private scandal respecting
+that great man.  Figure to yourself, Madam, his Excellency is in
+love; actually in love, talking day and night about a certain fair
+one whom he hath picked out of a gutter; who is well nigh forty
+years old; who was his mistress when he was in England a captain of
+dragoons, some sixty, seventy, or a hundred years since; who hath
+had a son by him, moreover, a sprightly lad, apprentice to a tailor
+of eminence that has the honour of making his Excellency's breeches.
+
+"Since one fatal night when he met this fair creature at a certain
+place of publique resort, called Marylebone Gardens, our Cyrus hath
+been an altered creature.  Love hath mastered this brainless
+ambassador, and his antics afford me food for perpetual mirth.  He
+sits now opposite to me at a table inditing a letter to his
+Catherine, and copying it from--what do you think?--from the 'Grand
+Cyrus.'  'I swear, madam, that my happiness would be to offer you
+this hand, as I have my heart long ago, and I beg you to bear in
+mind this declaration.'  I have just dictated to him the above
+tender words; for our Envoy, I need not tell you, is not strong at
+writing or thinking.
+
+"The fair Catherine, I must tell you, is no less than a carpenter's
+wife, a well-to-do bourgeois, living at the Tyburn, or Gallows Road.
+She found out her ancient lover very soon after our arrival, and
+hath a marvellous hankering to be a Count's lady.  A pretty little
+creature is this Madam Catherine.  Billets, breakfasts, pretty
+walks, presents of silks and satins, pass daily between the pair;
+but, strange to say, the lady is as virtuous as Diana, and hath
+resisted all my Count's cajoleries hitherto.  The poor fellow told
+me, with tears in his eyes, that he believed he should have carried
+her by storm on the very first night of their meeting, but that her
+son stepped into the way; and he or somebody else hath been in the
+way ever since.  Madam will never appear alone.  I believe it is
+this wondrous chastity of the lady that has elicited this wondrous
+constancy of the gentleman.  She is holding out for a settlement;
+who knows if not for a marriage?  Her husband, she says, is ailing;
+her lover is fool enough, and she herself conducts her negotiations,
+as I must honestly own, with a pretty notion of diplomacy."
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+This is the only part of the reverend gentleman's letter that
+directly affects this history.  The rest contains some scandal
+concerning greater personages about the Court, a great share of
+abuse of the Elector of Hanover, and a pretty description of a
+boxing-match at Mr. Figg's amphitheatre in Oxford Road, where John
+Wells, of Edmund Bury (as by the papers may be seen), master of the
+noble science of self-defence, did engage with Edward Sutton, of
+Gravesend, master of the said science; and the issue of the combat.
+
+"N. B."--adds the Father, in a postscript--"Monsieur Figue gives a
+hat to be cudgelled for before the Master mount; and the whole of
+this fashionable information hath been given me by Monseigneur's
+son, Monsieur Billings, garcon-tailleur, Chevalier de Galgenstein."
+
+Mr. Billings was, in fact, a frequent visitor at the Ambassador's
+house; to whose presence he, by a general order, was always
+admitted.  As for the connection between Mrs. Catherine and her
+former admirer, the Abbe's history of it is perfectly correct; nor
+can it be said that this wretched woman, whose tale now begins to
+wear a darker hue, was, in anything but SOUL, faithless to her
+husband.  But she hated him, longed to leave him, and loved another:
+the end was coming quickly, and every one of our unknowing actors
+and actresses were to be implicated, more or less, in the
+catastrophe.
+
+It will be seen that Mrs. Cat had followed pretty closely the
+injunctions of Mr. Wood in regard to her dealings with the Count;
+who grew more heart-stricken and tender daily, as the completion of
+his wishes was delayed, and his desires goaded by contradiction.
+The Abbe has quoted one portion of a letter written by him; here is
+the entire performance, extracted, as the holy father said, chiefly
+from the romance of the "Grand Cyrus".
+
+           "Unhappy Maximilian unto unjust Catherina.
+
+"MADAM,--It must needs be that I love you better than any ever did,
+since, notwithstanding your injustice in calling me perfidious, I
+love you no less than I did before.  On the contrary, my passion is
+so violent, and your unjust accusation makes me so sensible of it,
+that if you did but know the resentments of my soule, you would
+confess your selfe the most cruell and unjust woman in the world.
+You shall, ere long, Madam, see me at your feete; and as you were my
+first passion, so you will be my last.
+
+"On my knees I will tell you, at the first handsom opportunity, that
+the grandure of my passion can only be equalled by your beauty; it
+hath driven me to such a fatall necessity, as that I cannot hide the
+misery which you have caused.  Sure, the hostil goddes have, to
+plague me, ordayned that fatal marridge, by which you are bound to
+one so infinitly below you in degree.  Were that bond of ill-omind
+Hymen cut in twayn witch binds you, I swear, Madam, that my
+happiniss woulde be to offer you this hande, as I have my harte long
+agoe.  And I praye you to beare in minde this declaracion, which I
+here sign with my hande, and witch I pray you may one day be called
+upon to prove the truth on.  Beleave me, Madam, that there is none
+in the World who doth more honor to your vertue than myselfe, nor
+who wishes your happinesse with more zeal than--MAXIMILIAN.
+
+"From my lodgings in Whitehall, this 25th of February.
+
+"To the incomparable Catherina, these, with a scarlet satten
+petticoat."
+
+The Count had debated about the sentence promising marriage in event
+of Hayes's death; but the honest Abbe cut these scruples very short,
+by saying, justly, that, because he wrote in that manner, there was
+no need for him to act so; that he had better not sign and address
+the note in full; and that he presumed his Excellency was not quite
+so timid as to fancy that the woman would follow him all the way to
+Germany, when his diplomatic duties would be ended; as they would
+soon.
+
+The receipt of this billet caused such a flush of joy and exultation
+to unhappy happy Mrs. Catherine, that Wood did not fail to remark
+it, and speedily learned the contents of the letter.  Wood had no
+need to bid the poor wretch guard it very carefully:  it never from
+that day forth left her; it was her title of nobility,--her pass to
+rank, wealth, happiness.  She began to look down on her neighbours;
+her manner to her husband grew more than ordinarily scornful; the
+poor vain wretch longed to tell her secret, and to take her place
+openly in the world.  She a Countess, and Tom a Count's son!  She
+felt that she should royally become the title!
+
+About this time--and Hayes was very much frightened at the
+prevalence of the rumour--it suddenly began to be about in his
+quarter that he was going to quit the country.  The story was in
+everybody's mouth; people used to sneer when he turned pale, and
+wept, and passionately denied it.
+
+It was said, too, that Mrs. Hayes was not his wife, but his
+mistress--everybody had this story--his mistress, whom he treated
+most cruelly, and was about to desert.  The tale of the blow which
+had felled her to the ground was known in all quarters.  When he
+declared that the woman tried to stab him, nobody believed him:  the
+women said he would have been served right if she had done so.  How
+had these stories gone abroad?  "Three days more, and I WILL fly,"
+thought Hayes; "and the world may say what it pleases."
+
+Ay, fool, fly--away so swiftly that Fate cannot overtake thee:  hide
+so cunningly that Death shall not find thy place of refuge!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.  BEING A PREPARATION FOR THE END.
+
+
+
+The reader, doubtless, doth now partly understand what dark acts of
+conspiracy are beginning to gather around Mr. Hayes; and possibly
+hath comprehended--
+
+1.  That if the rumour was universally credited which declared that
+Mrs. Catherine was only Hayes's mistress, and not his wife,
+
+She might, if she so inclined, marry another person; and thereby not
+injure her fame and excite wonderment, but actually add to her
+reputation.
+
+2.  That if all the world did steadfastly believe that Mr. Hayes
+intended to desert this woman, after having cruelly maltreated her,
+
+The direction which his journey might take would be of no
+consequence; and he might go to Highgate, to Edinburgh, to
+Constantinople, nay, down a well, and no soul would care to ask
+whither he had gone.
+
+These points Mr. Hayes had not considered duly.  The latter case had
+been put to him, and annoyed him, as we have seen; the former had
+actually been pressed upon him by Mrs. Hayes herself; who, in almost
+the only communication she had had with him since their last
+quarrel, had asked him, angrily, in the presence of Wood and her
+son, whether he had dared to utter such lies, and how it came to
+pass that the neighbours looked scornfully at her, and avoided her?
+
+To this charge Mr. Hayes pleaded, very meekly, that he was not
+guilty; and young Billings, taking him by the collar, and clinching
+his fist in his face, swore a dreadful oath that he would have the
+life of him if he dared abuse his mother.  Mrs. Hayes then spoke of
+the general report abroad, that he was going to desert her; which,
+if he attempted to do, Mr. Billings vowed that he would follow him
+to Jerusalem and have his blood.  These threats, and the insolent
+language of young Billings, rather calmed Hayes than agitated him:
+he longed to be on his journey; but he began to hope that no
+obstacle would be placed in the way of it.  For the first time since
+many days, he began to enjoy a feeling something akin to security,
+and could look with tolerable confidence towards a comfortable
+completion of his own schemes of treason.
+
+These points being duly settled, we are now arrived, O public, at a
+point for which the author's soul hath been yearning ever since this
+history commenced.  We are now come, O critic, to a stage of the
+work when this tale begins to assume an appearance so interestingly
+horrific, that you must have a heart of stone if you are not
+interested by it.  O candid and discerning reader, who art sick of
+the hideous scenes of brutal bloodshed which have of late come forth
+from pens of certain eminent wits,* if you turn away disgusted from
+the book, remember that this passage hath not been written for you,
+or such as you, who have taste to know and hate the style in which
+it hath been composed; but for the public, which hath no such
+taste:--for the public, which can patronise four different
+representations of Jack Sheppard,--for the public whom its literary
+providers have gorged with blood and foul Newgate garbage,--and to
+whom we poor creatures, humbly following at the tail of our great
+high-priests and prophets of the press, may, as in duty bound, offer
+some small gift of our own:  a little mite truly, but given with
+good-will.  Come up, then, fair Catherine and brave Count;--appear,
+gallant Brock, and faultless Billings;--hasten hither, honest John
+Hayes:  the former chapters are but flowers in which we have been
+decking you for the sacrifice.  Ascend to the altar, ye innocent
+lambs, and prepare for the final act:  lo! the knife is sharpened,
+and the sacrificer ready!  Stretch your throats, sweet ones,--for
+the public is thirsty, and must have blood!
+
+* This was written in 1840.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+
+
+That Mr. Hayes had some notion of the attachment of Monsieur de
+Galgenstein for his wife is very certain:  the man could not but
+perceive that she was more gaily dressed, and more frequently absent
+than usual; and must have been quite aware that from the day of the
+quarrel until the present period, Catherine had never asked him for
+a shilling for the house expenses.  He had not the heart to offer,
+however; nor, in truth, did she seem to remember that money was due.
+
+She received, in fact, many sums from the tender Count.  Tom was
+likewise liberally provided by the same personage; who was,
+moreover, continually sending presents of various kinds to the
+person on whom his affections were centred.
+
+One of these gifts was a hamper of choice mountain-wine, which had
+been some weeks in the house, and excited the longing of Mr. Hayes,
+who loved wine very much.  This liquor was generally drunk by Wood
+and Billings, who applauded it greatly; and many times, in passing
+through the back-parlour,--which he had to traverse in order to
+reach the stair, Hayes had cast a tender eye towards the drink; of
+which, had he dared, he would have partaken.
+
+On the 1st of March, in the year 1726, Mr. Hayes had gathered
+together almost the whole sum with which he intended to decamp; and
+having on that very day recovered the amount of a bill which he
+thought almost hopeless, he returned home in tolerable good-humour;
+and feeling, so near was his period of departure, something like
+security.  Nobody had attempted the least violence on him:  besides,
+he was armed with pistols, had his money in bills in a belt about
+his person, and really reasoned with himself that there was no
+danger for him to apprehend.
+
+He entered the house about dusk, at five o'clock.  Mrs. Hayes was
+absent with Mr. Billings; only Mr. Wood was smoking, according to
+his wont, in the little back-parlour; and as Mr. Hayes passed, the
+old gentleman addressed him in a friendly voice, and, wondering that
+he had been such a stranger, invited him to sit and take a glass of
+wine.  There was a light and a foreman in the shop; Mr. Hayes gave
+his injunctions to that person, and saw no objection to Mr. Wood's
+invitation.
+
+The conversation, at first a little stiff between the two gentlemen,
+began speedily to grow more easy and confidential:  and so
+particularly bland and good-humoured was Mr., or Doctor Wood, that
+his companion was quite caught, and softened by the charm of his
+manner; and the pair became as good friends as in the former days of
+their intercourse.
+
+"I wish you would come down sometimes of evenings," quoth Doctor
+Wood; "for, though no book-learned man, Mr. Hayes, look you, you are
+a man of the world, and I can't abide the society of boys.  There's
+Tom, now, since this tiff with Mrs. Cat, the scoundrel plays the
+Grank Turk here!  The pair of 'em, betwixt them, have completely
+gotten the upper hand of you.  Confess that you are beaten, Master
+Hayes, and don't like the boy?"
+
+"No more I do," said Hayes; "and that's the truth on't.  A man doth
+not like to have his wife's sins flung in his face, nor to be
+perpetually bullied in his own house by such a fiery sprig as that."
+
+"Mischief, sir,--mischief only," said Wood:  "'tis the fun of youth,
+sir, and will go off as age comes to the lad.  Bad as you may think
+him--and he is as skittish and fierce, sure enough, as a young
+colt---there is good stuff in him; and though he hath, or fancies he
+hath, the right to abuse every one, by the Lord he will let none
+others do so!  Last week, now, didn't he tell Mrs. Cat that you
+served her right in the last beating matter? and weren't they coming
+to knives, just as in your case?  By my faith, they were.  Ay, and
+at the "Braund's Head," when some fellow said that you were a bloody
+Bluebeard, and would murder your wife, stab me if Tom wasn't up in
+an instant and knocked the fellow down for abusing of you!"
+
+The first of these stories was quite true; the second was only a
+charitable invention of Mr. Wood, and employed, doubtless, for the
+amiable purpose of bringing the old and young men together.  The
+scheme partially succeeded; for, though Hayes was not so far
+mollified towards Tom as to entertain any affection for a young man
+whom he had cordially detested ever since he knew him, yet he felt
+more at ease and cheerful regarding himself:  and surely not without
+reason.  While indulging in these benevolent sentiments, Mrs.
+Catherine and her son arrived, and found, somewhat to their
+astonishment, Mr. Hayes seated in the back-parlour, as in former
+times; and they were invited by Mr. Wood to sit down and drink.
+
+We have said that certain bottles of mountain-wine were presented by
+the Count to Mrs. Catherine:  these were, at Mr. Wood's suggestion,
+produced; and Hayes, who had long been coveting them, was charmed to
+have an opportunity to drink his fill.  He forthwith began bragging
+of his great powers as a drinker, and vowed that he could manage
+eight bottles without becoming intoxicated.
+
+Mr. Wood grinned strangely, and looked in a peculiar way at Tom
+Billings, who grinned too.  Mrs. Cat's eyes were turned towards the
+ground:  but her face was deadly pale.
+
+The party began drinking.  Hayes kept up his reputation as a toper,
+and swallowed one, two, three bottles without wincing.  He grew
+talkative and merry, and began to sing songs and to cut jokes; at
+which Wood laughed hugely, and Billings after him.  Mrs. Cat could
+not laugh; but sat silent.
+
+What ailed her?  Was she thinking of the Count?  She had been with
+Max that day, and had promised him, for the next night at ten, an
+interview near his lodgings at Whitehall.  It was the first time
+that she would see him alone.  They were to meet (not a very
+cheerful place for a love-tryst) at St. Margaret's churchyard, near
+Westminster Abbey.  Of this, no doubt, Cat was thinking; but what
+could she mean by whispering to Wood, "No, no! for God's sake, not
+tonight!"
+
+"She means we are to have no more liquor," said Wood to Mr. Hayes;
+who heard this sentence, and seemed rather alarmed.
+
+"That's it,--no more liquor," said Catherine eagerly; "you have had
+enough to-night.  Go to bed, and lock your door, and sleep, Mr.
+Hayes."
+
+"But I say I've NOT had enough drink!" screamed Hayes; "I'm good for
+five bottles more, and wager I will drink them too."
+
+"Done, for a guinea!" said Wood.
+
+"Done, and done!" said Billings.
+
+"Be YOU quiet!" growled Hayes, scowling at the lad.  "I will drink
+what I please, and ask no counsel of yours."  And he muttered some
+more curses against young Billings, which showed what his feelings
+were towards his wife's son; and which the latter, for a wonder,
+only received with a scornful smile, and a knowing look at Wood.
+
+Well! the five extra bottles were brought, and drunk by Mr. Hayes;
+and seasoned by many songs from the recueil of Mr. Thomas d'Urfey
+and others.  The chief part of the talk and merriment was on Hayes's
+part; as, indeed, was natural,--for, while he drank bottle after
+bottle of wine, the other two gentlemen confined themselves to small
+beer,--both pleading illness as an excuse for their sobriety.
+
+And now might we depict, with much accuracy, the course of Mr.
+Hayes's intoxication, as it rose from the merriment of the
+three-bottle point to the madness of the four--from the uproarious
+quarrelsomeness of the sixth bottle to the sickly stupidity of the
+seventh; but we are desirous of bringing this tale to a conclusion,
+and must pretermit all consideration of a subject so curious, so
+instructive, and so delightful.  Suffice it to say, as a matter of
+history, that Mr. Hayes did actually drink seven bottles of
+mountain-wine; and that Mr. Thomas Billings went to the "Braund's
+Head," in Bond Street, and purchased another, which Hayes likewise
+drank.
+
+"That'll do," said Mr. Wood to young Billings; and they led Hayes up
+to bed, whither, in truth, he was unable to walk himself.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+Mrs. Springatt, the lodger, came down to ask what the noise was.
+"'Tis only Tom Billings making merry with some friends from the
+country," answered Mrs. Hayes; whereupon Springatt retired, and the
+house was quiet.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+Some scuffling and stamping was heard about eleven o'clock.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+After they had seen Mr. Hayes to bed, Billings remembered that he
+had a parcel to carry to some person in the neighbourhood of the
+Strand; and, as the night was remarkably fine, he and Mr. Wood
+agreed to walk together, and set forth accordingly.
+
+(Here follows a description of the THAMES AT MIDNIGHT, in a fine
+historical style; with an account of Lambeth, Westminster, the
+Savoy, Baynard's Castle, Arundel House, the Temple; of Old London
+Bridge, with its twenty arches, "on which be houses builded, so that
+it seemeth rather a continuall street than a bridge;"--of Bankside,
+and the "Globe" and the "Fortune" Theatres; of the ferries across
+the river, and of the pirates who infest the same--namely,
+tinklermen, petermen, hebbermen, trawlermen; of the fleet of barges
+that lay at the Savoy steps; and of the long lines of slim wherries
+sleeping on the river banks and basking and shining in the
+moonbeams.  A combat on the river is described, that takes place
+between the crews of a tinklerman's boat and the water-bailiffs.
+Shouting his war-cry, "St. Mary Overy a la rescousse!" the
+water-bailiff sprung at the throat of the tinklerman captain.  The
+crews of both vessels, as if aware that the struggle of their chiefs
+would decide the contest, ceased hostilities, and awaited on their
+respective poops the issue of the death-shock.  It was not long
+coming.  "Yield, dog!" said the water-bailiff.  The tinklerman could
+not answer--for his throat was grasped too tight in the iron clench
+of the city champion; but drawing his snickersnee, he plunged it
+seven times in the bailiff's chest:  still the latter fell not.  The
+death-rattle gurgled in the throat of his opponent; his arms fell
+heavily to his side.  Foot to foot, each standing at the side of his
+boat, stood the brave men--THEY WERE BOTH DEAD!  "In the name of St.
+Clement Danes," said the master, "give way, my men!" and, thrusting
+forward his halberd (seven feet long, richly decorated with velvet
+and brass nails, and having the city arms, argent, a cross gules,
+and in the first quarter a dagger displayed of the second), he
+thrust the tinklerman's boat away from his own; and at once the
+bodies of the captains plunged down, down, down, down in the
+unfathomable waters.
+
+After this follows another episode.  Two masked ladies quarrel at
+the door of a tavern overlooking the Thames:  they turn out to be
+Stella and Vanessa, who have followed Swift thither; who is in the
+act of reading "Gulliver's Travels" to Gay, Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke,
+and Pope.  Two fellows are sitting shuddering under a doorway; to
+one of them Tom Billings flung a sixpence.  He little knew that the
+names of those two young men were--Samuel Johnson and Richard
+Savage.)
+
+
+
+ANOTHER LAST CHAPTER.
+
+
+
+Mr. Hayes did not join the family the next day; and it appears that
+the previous night's reconciliation was not very durable; for when
+Mrs. Springatt asked Wood for Hayes, Mr. Wood stated that Hayes had
+gone away without saying whither he was bound, or how long he might
+be absent.  He only said, in rather a sulky tone, that he should
+probably pass the night at a friend's house.  "For my part, I know
+of no friend he hath," added Mr. Wood; "and pray Heaven that he may
+not think of deserting his poor wife, whom he hath beaten and
+ill-used so already!"  In this prayer Mrs. Springatt joined; and so
+these two worthy people parted.
+
+What business Billings was about cannot be said; but he was this
+night bound towards Marylebone Fields, as he was the night before
+for the Strand and Westminster; and, although the night was very
+stormy and rainy, as the previous evening had been fine, old Wood
+good-naturedly resolved upon accompanying him; and forth they
+sallied together.
+
+Mrs. Catherine, too, had HER business, as we have seen; but this was
+of a very delicate nature.  At nine o'clock, she had an appointment
+with the Count; and faithfully, by that hour, had found her way to
+Saint Margaret's churchyard, near Westminster Abbey, where she
+awaited Monsieur de Galgenstein.
+
+The spot was convenient, being very lonely, and at the same time
+close to the Count's lodgings at Whitehall.  His Excellency came,
+but somewhat after the hour; for, to say the truth, being a
+freethinker, he had the most firm belief in ghosts and demons, and
+did not care to pace a churchyard alone.  He was comforted,
+therefore, when he saw a woman muffled in a cloak, who held out her
+hand to him at the gate, and said, "Is that you?"  He took her
+hand,--it was very clammy and cold; and at her desire he bade his
+confidential footman, who had attended him with a torch, to retire,
+and leave him to himself.
+
+The torch-bearer retired, and left them quite in darkness; and the
+pair entered the little cemetery, cautiously threading their way
+among the tombs.  They sat down on one, underneath a tree it seemed
+to be; the wind was very cold, and its piteous howling was the only
+noise that broke the silence of the place.  Catherine's teeth were
+chattering, for all her wraps; and when Max drew her close to him,
+and encircled her waist with one arm, and pressed her hand, she did
+not repulse him, but rather came close to him, and with her own damp
+fingers feebly returned his pressure.
+
+The poor thing was very wretched and weeping.  She confided to Max
+the cause of her grief.  She was alone in the world,--alone and
+penniless.  Her husband had left her; she had that very day received
+a letter from him which confirmed all that she had suspected so
+long.  He had left her, carried away all his property, and would not
+return!
+
+If we say that a selfish joy filled the breast of Monsieur de
+Galgenstein, the reader will not be astonished.  A heartless
+libertine, he felt glad at the prospect of Catherine's ruin; for he
+hoped that necessity would make her his own.  He clasped the poor
+thing to his heart, and vowed that he would replace the husband she
+had lost, and that his fortune should be hers.
+
+"Will you replace him?" said she.
+
+"Yes, truly, in everything but the name, dear Catherine; and when he
+dies, I swear you shall be Countess of Galgenstein."
+
+"Will you swear?" she cried, eagerly.
+
+"By everything that is most sacred:  were you free now, I would"
+(and here he swore a terrific oath) "at once make you mine."
+
+We have seen before that it cost Monsieur de Galgenstein nothing to
+make these vows.  Hayes was likely, too, to live as long as
+Catherine--as long, at least, as the Count's connection with her;
+but he was caught in his own snare.
+
+She took his hand and kissed it repeatedly, and bathed it in her
+tears, and pressed it to her bosom.  "Max," she said, "I AM FREE!
+Be mine, and I will love you as I have done for years and years."
+
+Max started back.  "What, is he dead?" he said.
+
+"No, no, not dead:  but he never was my husband."
+
+He let go her hand, and, interrupting her, said sharply, "Indeed,
+madam, if this carpenter never was your husband, I see no cause why
+_I_ should be.  If a lady, who hath been for twenty years the
+mistress of a miserable country boor, cannot find it in her heart to
+put up with the protection of a nobleman--a sovereign's
+representative--she may seek a husband elsewhere!"
+
+"I was no man's mistress except yours," sobbed Catherine, wringing
+her hands and sobbing wildly; "but, O Heaven! I deserved this.
+Because I was a child, and you saw, and ruined, and left
+me--because, in my sorrow and repentance, I wished to repair my
+crime, and was touched by that man's love, and married him--because
+he too deceives and leaves me--because, after loving you--madly
+loving you for twenty years--I will not now forfeit your respect,
+and degrade myself by yielding to your will, you too must scorn me!
+It is too much--too much--O Heaven!"  And the wretched woman fell
+back almost fainting.
+
+Max was almost frightened by this burst of sorrow on her part, and
+was coming forward to support her; but she motioned him away, and,
+taking from her bosom a letter, said, "If it were light, you could
+see, Max, how cruelly I have been betrayed by that man who called
+himself my husband.  Long before he married me, he was married to
+another.  This woman is still living, he says; and he says he leaves
+me for ever."
+
+At this moment the moon, which had been hidden behind Westminster
+Abbey, rose above the vast black mass of that edifice, and poured a
+flood of silver light upon the little church of St. Margaret's, and
+the spot where the lovers stood.  Max was at a little distance from
+Catherine, pacing gloomily up and down the flags.  She remained at
+her old position at the tombstone under the tree, or pillar, as it
+seemed to be, as the moon got up.  She was leaning against the
+pillar, and holding out to Max, with an arm beautifully white and
+rounded, the letter she had received from her husband:  "Read it,
+Max," she said:  "I asked for light, and here is Heaven's own, by
+which you may read."
+
+But Max did not come forward to receive it.  On a sudden his face
+assumed a look of the most dreadful surprise and agony.  He stood
+still, and stared with wild eyes starting from their sockets; he
+stared upwards, at a point seemingly above Catherine's head.  At
+last he raised up his finger slowly and said, "Look, Cat--THE
+HEAD--THE HEAD!"  Then uttering a horrible laugh, he fell down
+grovelling among the stones, gibbering and writhing in a fit of
+epilepsy.
+
+Catherine started forward and looked up.  She had been standing
+against a post, not a tree--the moon was shining full on it now; and
+on the summit strangely distinct, and smiling ghastly, was a livid
+human head.
+
+The wretched woman fled--she dared look no more.  And some hours
+afterwards, when, alarmed by the Count's continued absence, his
+confidential servant came back to seek for him in the churchyard, he
+was found sitting on the flags, staring full at the head, and
+laughing, and talking to it wildly, and nodding at it.  He was taken
+up a hopeless idiot, and so lived for years and years; clanking the
+chain, and moaning under the lash, and howling through long nights
+when the moon peered through the bars of his solitary cell, and he
+buried his face in the straw.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+There--the murder is out!  And having indulged himself in a chapter
+of the very finest writing, the author begs the attention of the
+British public towards it; humbly conceiving that it possesses some
+of those peculiar merits which have rendered the fine writing in
+other chapters of the works of other authors so famous.
+
+Without bragging at all, let us just point out the chief claims of
+the above pleasing piece of composition.  In the first place, it is
+perfectly stilted and unnatural; the dialogue and the sentiments
+being artfully arranged, so as to be as strong and majestic as
+possible.  Our dear Cat is but a poor illiterate country wench, who
+has come from cutting her husband's throat; and yet, see! she talks
+and looks like a tragedy princess, who is suffering in the most
+virtuous blank verse.  This is the proper end of fiction, and one of
+the greatest triumphs that a novelist can achieve:  for to make
+people sympathise with virtue is a vulgar trick that any common
+fellow can do; but it is not everybody who can take a scoundrel, and
+cause us to weep and whimper over him as though he were a very
+saint.  Give a young lady of five years old a skein of silk and a
+brace of netting-needles, and she will in a short time turn you out
+a decent silk purse--anybody can; but try her with a sow's ear, and
+see whether she can make a silk purse out of THAT.  That is the work
+for your real great artist; and pleasant it is to see how many have
+succeeded in these latter days.
+
+The subject is strictly historical, as anyone may see by referring
+to the Daily Post of March 3, 1726, which contains the following
+paragraph:
+
+"Yesterday morning, early, a man's head, that by the freshness of it
+seemed to have been newly cut off from the body, having its own hair
+on, was found by the river's side, near Millbank, Westminster, and
+was afterwards exposed to public view in St. Margaret's churchyard,
+where thousands of people have seen it; but none could tell who the
+unhappy person was, much less who committed such a horrid and
+barbarous action.  There are various conjectures relating to the
+deceased; but there being nothing certain, we omit them.  The head
+was much hacked and mangled in the cutting off."
+
+The head which caused such an impression upon Monsieur de
+Galgenstein was, indeed, once on the shoulders of Mr. John Hayes,
+who lost it under the following circumstances.  We have seen how Mr.
+Hayes was induced to drink.  Mr. Hayes having been encouraged in
+drinking the wine, and growing very merry therewith, he sang and
+danced about the room; but his wife, fearing the quantity he had
+drunk would not have the wished-for effect on him, she sent away for
+another bottle, of which he drank also.  This effectually answered
+their expectations; and Mr. Hayes became thereby intoxicated, and
+deprived of his understanding.
+
+He, however, made shift to get into the other room, and, throwing
+himself upon the bed, fell asleep; upon which Mrs. Hayes reminded
+them of the affair in hand, and told them that was the most proper
+juncture to finish the business. *
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+* The description of the murder and the execution of the culprits,
+which here follows in the original, was taken from the newspapers of
+the day.  Coming from such a source they have, as may be imagined,
+no literary merit whatever.  The details of the crime are simply
+horrible, without one touch of even that sort of romance which
+sometimes gives a little dignity to murder.  As such they precisely
+suited Mr. Thackeray's purpose at the time--which was to show the
+real manners and customs of the Sheppards and Turpins who were then
+the popular heroes of fiction.  But nowadays there is no such
+purpose to serve, and therefore these too literal details are
+omitted.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+
+Ring, ding, ding! the gloomy green curtain drops, the dramatis
+personae are duly disposed of, the nimble candle snuffers put out
+the lights, and the audience goeth pondering home.  If the critic
+take the pains to ask why the author, who hath been so diffuse in
+describing the early and fabulous acts of Mrs. Catherine's
+existence, should so hurry off the catastrophe where a deal of the
+very finest writing might have been employed, Solomons replies that
+the "ordinary" narrative is far more emphatic than any composition
+of his own could be, with all the rhetorical graces which he might
+employ.  Mr. Aram's trial, as taken by the penny-a-liners of those
+days, had always interested him more than the lengthened and
+poetical report which an eminent novelist has given of the same.
+Mr. Turpin's adventures are more instructive and agreeable to him in
+the account of the Newgate Plutarch, than in the learned Ainsworth's
+Biographical Dictionary.  And as he believes that the professional
+gentlemen who are employed to invest such heroes with the rewards
+that their great actions merit, will go through the ceremony of the
+grand cordon with much more accuracy and despatch than can be shown
+by the most distinguished amateur; in like manner he thinks that the
+history of such investitures should be written by people directly
+concerned, and not by admiring persons without, who must be ignorant
+of many of the secrets of Ketchcraft.  We very much doubt if Milton
+himself could make a description of an execution half so horrible as
+the simple lines in the Daily Post of a hundred and ten years since,
+that now lies before us--"herrlich wie am ersten Tag,"--as bright
+and clean as on the day of publication.  Think of it! it has been
+read by Belinda at her toilet, scanned at "Button's" and "Will's,"
+sneered at by wits, talked of in palaces and cottages, by a busy
+race in wigs, red heels, hoops, patches, and rags of all variety--a
+busy race that hath long since plunged and vanished in the
+unfathomable gulf towards which we march so briskly.
+
+Where are they?  "Afflavit Deus"--and they are gone!  Hark! is not
+the same wind roaring still that shall sweep us down? and yonder
+stands the compositor at his types who shall put up a pretty
+paragraph some day to say how, "Yesterday, at his house in Grosvenor
+Square," or "At Botany Bay, universally regretted," died So-and-So.
+Into what profound moralities is the paragraph concerning Mrs.
+Catherine's burning leading us!
+
+Ay, truly, and to that very point have we wished to come; for,
+having finished our delectable meal, it behoves us to say a word or
+two by way of grace at its conclusion, and be heartily thankful that
+it is over.  It has been the writer's object carefully to exclude
+from his drama (except in two very insignificant instances--mere
+walking-gentlemen parts), any characters but those of scoundrels of
+the very highest degree.  That he has not altogether failed in the
+object he had in view, is evident from some newspaper critiques
+which he has had the good fortune to see; and which abuse the tale
+of "Catherine" as one of the dullest, most vulgar, and immoral works
+extant.  It is highly gratifying to the author to find that such
+opinions are abroad, as they convince him that the taste for Newgate
+literature is on the wane, and that when the public critic has right
+down undisguised immorality set before him, the honest creature is
+shocked at it, as he should be, and can declare his indignation in
+good round terms of abuse.  The characters of the tale ARE immoral,
+and no doubt of it; but the writer humbly hopes the end is not so.
+The public was, in our notion, dosed and poisoned by the prevailing
+style of literary practice, and it was necessary to administer some
+medicine that would produce a wholesome nausea, and afterwards bring
+about a more healthy habit.
+
+And, thank Heaven, this effect HAS been produced in very many
+instances, and that the "Catherine" cathartic has acted most
+efficaciously.  The author has been pleased at the disgust which his
+work has excited, and has watched with benevolent carefulness the
+wry faces that have been made by many of the patients who have
+swallowed the dose.  Solomons remembers, at the establishment in
+Birchin Lane where he had the honour of receiving his education,
+there used to be administered to the boys a certain cough-medicine,
+which was so excessively agreeable that all the lads longed to have
+colds in order to partake of the remedy.  Some of our popular
+novelists have compounded their drugs in a similar way, and made
+them so palatable that a public, once healthy and honest, has been
+well-nigh poisoned by their wares.  Solomons defies anyone to say
+the like of himself--that his doses have been as pleasant as
+champagne, and his pills as sweet as barley-sugar;--it has been his
+attempt to make vice to appear entirely vicious; and in those
+instances where he hath occasionally introduced something like
+virtue, to make the sham as evident as possible, and not allow the
+meanest capacity a single chance to mistake it.
+
+And what has been the consequence?  That wholesome nausea which it
+has been his good fortune to create wherever he has been allowed to
+practise in his humble circle.
+
+Has anyone thrown away a halfpennyworth of sympathy upon any person
+mentioned in this history?  Surely no.  But abler and more famous
+men than Solomons have taken a different plan; and it becomes every
+man in his vocation to cry out against such, and expose their errors
+as best he may.
+
+Labouring under such ideas, Mr. Isaac Solomons, junior, produced the
+romance of Mrs. Cat, and confesses himself completely happy to have
+brought it to a conclusion.  His poem may be dull--ay, and probably
+is.  The great Blackmore, the great Dennis, the great Sprat, the
+great Pomfret, not to mention great men of our own time--have they
+not also been dull, and had pretty reputations too?  Be it granted
+Solomons IS dull; but don't attack his morality; he humbly submits
+that, in his poem, no man shall mistake virtue for vice, no man
+shall allow a single sentiment of pity or admiration to enter his
+bosom for any character of the piece:  it being, from beginning to
+end, a scene of unmixed rascality performed by persons who never
+deviate into good feeling.  And although he doth not pretend to
+equal the great modern authors, whom he hath mentioned, in wit or
+descriptive power; yet, in the point of moral, he meekly believes
+that he has been their superior; feeling the greatest disgust for
+the characters he describes, and using his humble endeavour to cause
+the public also to hate them.
+
+Horsemonger Lane:  January 1840.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Catherine: A Story, by William Thackeray
+
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