The Colonel stared before him as if hypnotised; he stumbled in his walk. Was it possible to mistake the implication—that the laurels ought by rights to have adorned the brow of this stranger beside him? He felt like one whose faith had suddenly exploded of its own intensity, leaving his breast a blackened shell. Could there actually have been another, of whom he had never heard, at the Duke’s right hand on that tremendous day, the presiding but unconfessed genius of it? He had heard speak of the Corsican’s little red familiar. Was his great rival, were possibly all commanding intellects, so supernaturally provided?
He was really a simple man, with a mind ruled to certain prescriptive lines of conduct. He glanced askance at his companion, who was smiling and murmuring to himself. Who in Heaven’s name could he be? and why had he selected him for his astounding confidences? For all his own fearless rectitude, an uncanny feeling began to possess him. He was glad, in turning a corner, to see the end of the path, and the head of a waiting coachman showing above the hedge. And the next moment they had emerged on to the village green.
A barouche stood there, with a bare-headed gentleman standing at its door. The liveries of the servants were scarlet, and a mounted man in a scarlet embroidered coat waited a little apart. The gentleman came forward.
“Will your Majesty be pleased to ascend?” he asked.
The King dropped the Colonel’s arm, and appeared on the instant to forget all about him.
“Yes, Watty; yes, certainly, my boy,” he said. “Is that the fiery chariot?”
Beau Brummell
George Bryan Brummell, Esq., his Britannic Majesty’s Consul in the Norman city of Caen, was about to entertain. He had given instructions to his attendant that great company was expected, together with a list of the distinguished names to be announced; and by eight o’clock his room in the Hôtel d’Angleterre was prepared, the tables for whist were set out and the bougies lighted. Staring, half hypnotised, into the radiance of one of these placed on the mantelpiece, the Beau’s eyes blinked, and the Beau himself faced about with a puzzled look and a suspicious sniff.
“What is that smell, Loustalot?”
He spoke to the attendant, who in his little black jaquette and blue apron looked very much like what, in fact, he was—a waiter at the hotel. The expression on this man’s face scintillated between gravity and mockery; the tone of his voice hovered between audacity and deference.