But it is ill getting about, for all that the springtime is so sweet—as sweet and as capricious as a woman wooed—and thus there is time for this occupation of scribe; yet it is a curious task for one bred to so vastly different a trade; neither, God knows, do I find time heavy on my hands just now! Nevertheless, I must even end this preface as I have begun it, and say that I am fain to do as I am bidden.
The last line I traced upon these sheets (I am filled with a good deal of wonder at, and no little admiration of myself, when I view what a goodly mass I have already blackened) was penned at one of the darkest moments of that dark year.
M. de Schreckendorf—little messenger of such ill omen—had but just departed, and in the month that followed his visit the courage had failed me to resume my melancholy record, though truly I had things to relate that a man might consider like to form a more than usually thrilling chapter of autobiography.
Towards the beginning of September, I, still a dweller upon my mother’s little property—most peaceful haunt, it would seem, in the heart of our peaceful land—began to find myself the object of a series of murderous attacks—these, so repeated and inveterate, that it was evident that they were dictated by the most deliberate purpose, and the more alarming, perhaps, that I could give then no guess from what quarter they proceeded.
Suspicion fell on a poaching gang, on a dishonest groom, on a discharged bailiff. At length, seeing my mother like to fall ill of the anxiety, I consented to return to London, although the country life and the wholesome excitement of sport had afforded me a relief from my restlessness which existence in the town was far from providing.
No sooner, however, was I fully installed in my London chambers, than the persecution began afresh. I had fallen into an idle habit of going night after night to White’s, there to bet and gamble with my modish acquaintances. ’Twas not that the dice had any special attraction for me, but that my nights were so long.
On my way thither one mid-October foggy evening, my life was once more attempted, and this time with a deliberation and ferocity which might well have proved successful at last.
As it was, however, I again providentially escaped, and was able to proceed to the club, where I had an appointment with a poor youth—our Norfolk neighbour, Sir John Beddoes—who had already lost a great deal of money to me, and would not be content until he had lost a great deal more: I had the most insupportable good luck.
I little knew that I should find awaiting me there the greatest danger I had yet to run; that the head which had directed all these blows in the dark was, de guerre lasse, preparing to attack me in the open, and push its malice to a certain climax. A foreign gentleman—one Chevalier de Ville-Rouge, as I knew him then—had sedulously sought first my acquaintance, and thereupon my company, for some weeks past. And though I had not found him very entertaining—I was not in the mood to be entertained by any one—I had no reason to deny him either the one or the other.