“Really,” said I, “I have been so busy.”
“Ah, mon ami!” cried Vincent, “the greatest sign of an idle man is to complain of being busy. But you have had a loss: the pamphlet is good. C—, by the way, has an extraordinary, though not an expanded mind; it is like a citizen’s garden near London: a pretty parterre here, and a Chinese pagoda there; an oak tree in one corner, and a mushroom bed in the other. You may traverse the whole in a stride; it is the four quarters of the globe in a mole-hill. Yet every thing is good in its kind; and is neither without elegance nor design in its arrangement.”
“What do you think,” said I, “of the Baron de—, the minister of—?”
“Of him!” replied Vincent—
“‘His soul Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole.’”
“It is dark and bewildered—full of dim visions of the ancient regime;—it is a bat hovering about the chambers of an old ruin. Poor, antique little soul! but I will say nothing more about it,—
“‘For who would be satirical Upon a thing so very small’ as the soul of the Baron de ———?”
Finding Lord Vincent so disposed to the biting mood, I immediately directed his rabies towards Mr. Aberton, for whom I had a most inexpressible contempt.
“Aberton,” said Vincent, in answer to my question, if he knew that aimable attache—“Yes! a sort of man who, speaking of the English embassy, says we—who sticks his best cards on his chimney-piece, and writes himself billets-doux from duchesses. A duodecimo of ‘precious conceits,’ bound in calf-skin—I know the man well; does he not dress decently, Pelham?”
“His clothes are well made,” said I; “but no man can dress well with those hands and feet!”