“Hush!” said my father, “Pisistratus has dipped his pen in the ink, and it seems to me easier for the wisest man that ever lived to account for what others have done than to predict what they should do. Phrenologists discovered that Mr. Thurtell had a very fine organ of Conscientiousness; yet, somehow or other, that erring personage contrived to knock the brains out of his friend’s organ of Individuality. Therefore I rise to propose a Resolution,—that this meeting be adjourned till Pisistratus has completed his narrative; and we shall then have the satisfaction of knowing that it ought, according to every principle of nature, science, and art, to have been completed differently. Why should we deprive ourselves of that pleasure?”
“I second the motion,” said the captain; “but if Levy be not hanged, I shall say that there is an end of all poetical justice.”
“Take care of poor Helen,” said Blanche, tenderly: “nor, that I would have you forget Violante.”
“Pish! and sit down, or they shall both die old maids.” Frightened at that threat, Blanche, with a deprecating look, drew her stool quietly near me, as if to place her two proteges in an atmosphere mesmerized to matrimonial attractions; and my mother set hard to work—at a new frock for the baby. Unsoftened by these undue female influences, Pisistratus wrote on at the dictation of the relentless Fates. His pen was of iron, and his heart was of granite. He was as insensible to the existence of wife and baby as if he had never paid a house bill, nor rushed from a nursery at the sound of an infant squall. O blessed privilege of Authorship!
“O testudinis aureae
Dulcem quae strepitum, Pieri, temperas!
O mutis quoque piscibus
Donatura cyeni, si libeat, sonum!”
[“O Muse, who dost temper the sweet sound of the golden shell of the
tortoise, and couldst also give, were it needed, to silent fishes
the song of the swan.”]
CHAPTER II.
It is necessary to go somewhat back in the course of this narrative, and account to the reader for the disappearance of Violante.
It may be remembered that Peschiera, scared by the sudden approach of Lord L’Estrange, had little time for further words to the young Italian, than those which expressed his intention to renew the conference, and press for her decision. But the next day, when he re-entered the garden, secretly and stealthily, as before, Violante did not appear. And after watching round the precincts till dusk, the count retreated, with an indignant conviction that his arts had failed to enlist on his side either the heart or the imagination of his intended victim. He began now to revolve and to discuss with Levy the possibilities of one of those bold and violent measures, which were favoured by his reckless daring and desperate condition. But Levy treated with such just ridicule any suggestion to abstract Violante by force from Lord Lansmere’s house, so scouted the notions of nocturnal assault, with the devices of scaling windows and rope-ladders, that the count reluctantly abandoned that romance of villany so unsuited to our sober capital, and which would no doubt have terminated in his capture by the police, with the prospect of committal to the House of Correction.
Levy himself found his invention at fault, and Randal Leslie was called into consultation. The usurer had contrived that Randal’s schemes of fortune and advancement were so based upon Levy’s aid and connivance, that the young man, with all his desire rather to make instruments of other men, than to be himself their instrument, found his superior intellect as completely a slave to Levy’s more experienced craft, as ever subtle Genius of air was subject to the vulgar Sorcerer of earth.