“Ah!” said Vincent, “I should think he went to the best tailor, and said, ‘give me a collar like Lord So and So’s’; one who would not dare to have a new waistcoat till it had been authoritatively patronized, and who took his fashions, like his follies, from the best proficients. Such fellows are always too ashamed of themselves not to be proud of their clothes—like the Chinese mariners, they burn incense before the needle!”
“And Mr. Howard de Howard,” said I, laughing, “what do you think of him?”
“What! the thin secretary?” cried Vincent.
“He is the mathematical definition of a straight line—length without breadth. His inseparable friend, Mr. Aberton, was running up the Rue St. Honore yesterday in order to catch him.”
“Running!” cried I, “just like common people—when were you or I ever seen running?”
“True,” continued Vincent; “but when I saw him chasing that meagre apparition, I said to Bennington, ‘I have found out the real Peter Schlemil!’ ‘Who?’ (asked his grave lordship, with serious naivete) ‘Mr. Aberton,’ said I; ‘don’t you see him running after his shadow?’ But the pride of the lean thing is so amusing! He is fifteenth cousin to the duke, and so his favourite exordium is, ‘Whenever I succeed to the titles of my ancestors.‘It was but the other day, that he heard two or three silly young men discussing church and state, and they began by talking irreligion—(Mr. Howard de Howard is too unsubstantial not to be spiritually inclined)—however he only fidgeted in his chair. They then proceeded to be exceedingly disloyal. Mr. Howard de Howard fidgeted again;—they then passed to vituperations on the aristocracy—this the attenuated pomposity (magni nominis umbra) could brook no longer. He rose up, cast a severe look on the abashed youths, and thus addressed them—‘Gentlemen, I have sate by in silence, and heard my King derided, and my God blasphemed; but now in attacking the aristocracy, I can no longer refrain from noticing so obviously intentional an insult. You have become personal.’ But did you know, Pelham, that he is going to be married?”
“No,” said I. “I can’t say that I thought such an event likely. Who is the intended?”
“A Miss—, a girl with some fortune. ‘I can bring her none,’ said he to the father, ‘but I can make her Mrs. Howard de Howard.’”
“Alas, poor girl!” said I, “I fear that her happiness will hang upon a slender thread. But suppose we change the conversation: first, because the subject is so meagre, that we might easily wear it out, and secondly, because such jests may come home. I am not very corpulent myself.”
“Bah!” said Vincent, “but at least you have bones and muscles. If you were to pound the poor secretary in a mortar, you might take him all up in a pinch of snuff.”