Devereux — Volume 05

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

There was something grand in this. it might have elicited a few strokes of pathos, when—never was there anything so strangely provoking—the Abbe Dubois himself was heard in my anteroom. I thought this chance, but it was more; the good Abbe, I afterwards found, had traced cause for suspicion, and had come to pay me a visit of amatory police. I opened my dressing-room door, and thrust in the lady. "There," said I, "are the back-stairs, and at the bottom of the back-stairs is a door."

Would not any one have thought this hint enough? By no means; this very tall lady stooped to the littleness of listening, and, instead of departing, stationed herself by the keyhole.

I never exactly learned whether Dubois suspected the visit his mistress had paid me, or whether he merely surmised, from his spies or her escritoire, that she harboured an inclination towards me; in either case his policy was natural, and like himself. He sat himself down, talked of the Regent, of pleasure, of women, and, at last, of this very tall lady in question.

"/La pauvre diablesse/," said he, contemptuously, "I had once compassion on her; I have repented it ever since. You have no idea what a terrible creature she is; has such a wen in her neck, quite a /goitre/. /Mort diable/!" (and the Abbe spat in his handkerchief), "I would sooner have a /liaison/ with the witch of Endor!"

Not content with this, he went on in his usual gross and displeasing manner to enumerate or to forge those various particulars of her personal charms which he thought most likely to steel me against her attractions. "Thank Heaven, at least," thought I, "that she has gone!"

Scarcely had this pious gratulation flowed from my heart, before the door was burst open, and, pale, trembling, eyes on fire, hands clenched, forth stalked the lady in question. A wonderful proof how much sooner a woman would lose her character than allow it to be called not worth the losing! She entered, and had all the furies of Hades lent her their tongues, she could not have been more eloquent. It would have been a very pleasant scene if one had not been a partner in it. The old Abbe, with his keen, astute marked face, struggling between surprise, fear, the sense of the ridiculous, and the certainty of losing his mistress; the lady, foaming at the mouth, and shaking her clenched hand most menacingly at her traducer; myself endeavouring to pacify, and acting, as one does at such moments, mechanically, though one flatters one's self afterwards that one acted solely from wisdom.

But the Abbe's mistress was by no means content with vindicating herself: she retaliated, and gave so minute a description of the Abbe's own qualities and graces, coupled with so any pleasing illustrations, that in a very little time his coolness forsook him, and he grew in as great a rage as herself. At last she flew out of the room. The Abbe, trembling with passion, shook me most cordially by the hand, grinned from ear to ear, said it was a capital joke, wished me good-by as if he loved me better than his eyes, and left the house my most irreconcilable and bitter foe!

How could it be otherwise? The rivalship the Abbe might have forgiven; such things happened every day to him: but the having been made so egregiously ridiculous the Abbe could not forgive; and the Abbe's was a critical age for jesting on these matters, sixty or so. And then such unpalatable sarcasms on his appearance! "'Tis all over in that quarter," said I to myself, "but we may find another," and I drove out that very day to pay my respects to the Regent.

What a pity it is that one's pride should so often be the bane of one's wisdom. Ah! that one could be as good a man of the world in practice as one is in theory! my master-stroke of policy at that moment would evidently have been this: I should have gone to the Regent and made out a story similar to the real one, but with this difference, all the ridicule of the situation should have fallen upon me, and the little Dubois should have been elevated on a pinnacle of respectable appearances! This, as the Regent told the Abbe everything, would have saved me. I saw the plan; but was too proud to adopt it; I followed another course in my game: I threw away the knave, and played with the king, /i.e./, with the Regent. After a little preliminary conversation, I turned the conversation on the Abbe.

"Ah! the /scelerat/!" said Philip, smiling, "'tis a sad dog, but very clever and /loves me/, he would be incomparable, if he were but decently honest."