“The morning she slapped my face,” says Hans, “filled the measure of my bliss, for I then saw she could not control her feelings for me.” This passage recurred to me as I lay there, and I hugged myself in the thought that such a moment of delight might yet be mine. The profound German explains this sentiment well. “With women,” says he, “love is like the idol worship of an Indian tribe; at the moment their hearts are bursting with devotion, they like to cut and wound and maltreat their god. With them, this is the ecstasy of their passion.”
I now saw that the girl was in love with me, and that she did not know it herself. I take it that the sensations of a man who suddenly discovers that the pretty girl he has been admiring is captivated by his attentions, are very like what a head clerk may feel at being sent for by the house, and informed that he is now one of the firm! This may seem a commercial formula to employ, but it will serve to show my meaning; and as I lay there on that velvet turf, what a delicious vision spread itself around me! At one moment we were rich, travelling in splendor through Europe, amassing art-treasures wherever we went and despoiling all the great galleries of their richest gems. I was the associate of all that was distinguished in literature and science, and my wife the chosen friend of queens and princesses. How unaffected we were, how unspoiled by fortune! Approachable by all, our graceful benevolence seemed to elevate its object and make of the recipient the benefactor. What a world of bliss this vile dross men call gold can scatter! “There—there, good people,” said I, blandly, waving my hand, “no illuminations, no bonfires; your happy faces are the brightest of all welcomes.” Then we were suddenly poor,—out of caprice, just to see how we should like it,—and living in a little cottage under Snowden, and I was writing, Heaven knows what, for the periodicals, and my wife rocking a little urchin in a cradle, whom we constantly awoke by kissing, each pretending that it was all the other's fault, till we ratified a peace in the same fashion. Then I remembered the night, never to be forgotten, when I received my appointment as something in the antipodes, and we went up to town to thank the great man who bestowed it, and he asked us to dinner, and he was, I fancied, more than polite to my wife, and I sulked about it when we got home, and she petted and caressed me, and we were better friends than ever, and I swore I would not accept the Minister's bounty, and we set off back again to our cottage in Wales, and there we were when I came to myself once more.
It is always pleasant—at least, I have ever felt it so, on awaking from a dream or a revery—to know that one has borne himself well in some imaginary crisis of difficulty and peril. I like to think that I was in no hurry to get into the longboat. I am glad I gave poor Dick that last fifty-pound note,—my last in the world,—and I rejoice to remember that I did not run away from that grizzly bear, but sent the four-pound ball right into the very middle of his forehead. You feel in all these that the metal of your nature has been tested, and come out pure gold; at all events, I did, and was very happy thereat. It was not till after some little time that I could get myself clear out of dreamland, and back to the actual world of small debts and difficulties, and then I bethought me of the newspaper which lay unread beside me.
I began it now, resolved to examine it from end to end, till I discovered the passage that alluded to me. It was so far pleasant reading, that it was novel and original. A very able leader set forth that nothing could equal the blessings of the Pope's rule at Rome,—no people were so happy, so prosperous, or so contented,—that all the granaries were full, and all the jails empty, and the only persons of small incomes in the state were the cardinals, and that they were too heavenly-minded to care for it. After this, there came some touching anecdotes of that good man the late King of Naples. And then there was a letter from Frohsdorf, with fifteen francs enclosed to the inhabitants of a village submerged by an inundation. There were pleasant little paragraphs, too, about England, and all the money she was spending to propagate infidelity and spread the slave-trade,—the two great and especial objects of her policy,—after which came insults to France and injustice to Ireland. The general tone of the print was war with every one but some twenty or thirty old ladies and gentlemen living in exile somewhere in Bohemia. Now, none of these things touched me, and I was growing very weary of my search when I lighted upon the following:—
“We are informed, on authority that we cannot question, that the young C. de P. is now making the tour of Germany alone and in disguise, his object being to ascertain for himself how the various relatives of his house, on the maternal side, would feel affected by any movement in France to renew his pretensions. Strange, undignified, and ill advised as such a step must seem, there is nothing in it at all repulsive to the well-known traditions of the younger branch. Our informant himself met the P. at Mayence, and speedily recognized him, from the marked resemblance he bears to the late Duchess, his mother; he addressed him at once by his title, but was met by the cold assurance that he was mistaken, and that a casual similarity in features bad already led others into the same error. The General—for our informant is an old and honored soldier of France—confessed he was astounded at the aplomb and self-possession displayed by so young a man; and although their conversation lasted for nearly an hour, and ranged over a wide field, the C. never for an instant exposed himself to a detection, nor offered the slightest clew to his real rank and station. Indeed, he affected to be English by birth, which his great facility in the language enabled him to do. When he quitted Mayence, it was for Central Germany.”
Here was the whole mystery revealed, and I was no less a person than a royal prince,—very like my mother, but neither so tall nor robust as my distinguished father! “Oh, Potts! in all the wildest ravings of your most florid moments you never arrived at this!”
A very strange thrill went through me as I finished this paragraph. It came this wise. There is, in one of Hoffman's tales, the story of a man who, in a compact with the Fiend, acquired the power of personating whomsoever he pleased, but who, sated at last with the enjoyment of this privilege, and eager for a new sensation, determined he would try whether the part of the Devil himself might not be amusing. Apparently Mephistopheles won't stand joking, for he resented the liberty by depriving the transgressor of his identity forever, and made him become each instant whatever character occurred to the mind of him he talked to.
Though the parallel scarcely applied, the very thought of it sent an aguish thrill through me,—a terror so great and acute that it was very long before I could turn the medal round and read it on the reverse. There, indeed, was matter for vainglory! “It was but t'other day,” thought I, “and Lord Keldrum and his friends fancied I was their intimate acquaintance, Jack Burgoyne; and though they soon found out the mistake, the error led to an invitation to dinner, a delightful evening, and, alas! that I should own, a variety of consequences, some of which proved less delightful. Now, however, Fortune is in a more amiable mood; she will have it that I resemble a prince. It is a project which I neither aid nor abet; but I am not childish enough to refuse the rôle any more than I should spoil the Christmas revelries of a country-house by declining a part in a tableau or in private theatricals. I say, in the one case as in the other, 'Here is Potts! make of him what you will. Never is he happier than by affording pleasure to his friends.' To what end, I would ask, should I rob that old lady upstairs at No. 12, evidently a widow, and with not too many enjoyments to solace her old age,—why should I rob her of what she herself called the proudest episode in her life? Are not, as the moralists tell us, all our joys fleeting? Why, then, object to this one that it may only last for a few days? Let us suppose it only to endure throughout our journey, and the poor old soul will be so happy, never caring for the fatignes of the road, never fretting about the inn-keepers* charges, but delighted to know that his Royal Highness enjoys himself, and sits over his bottle of Chambertin every evening in the garden, apparently as devoid of care as though he were a bagman.”
I cannot say how it may be with others, but, for myself, I have always experienced an immense sense of relief, actual repose, whenever I personated somebody else; I felt as though I had left the man Potts at home to rest and refresh himself, and took an airing as another gentleman; just as I might have spared my own paletot by putting on a friend's coat in a thunderstorm. Now I did wish for a little repose, I felt it would be good for me. As to the special part allotted me, I took it just as an obliging actor plays Hamlet or the Cock to convenience the manager. Mrs. Keats likes it, and, I repeat, I do not object to it.
It was evident that the old lady was not going to communicate her secret to her companion, and this was a great source of satisfaction to me. Whatever delusions I threw around Miss Herbert I intended should be lasting. The traits in which I would invest myself to her eyes, my personal prowess, coolness in danger, skill in all manly exercises, together with a large range of general gifts and acquirements, I meant to accompany me through all time; and I am a sufficient believer in magnetism to feel assured that by imposing upon her I should go no small part of the road to deceiving myself, and that the first step in any gift is to suppose you are eminently suited to it, is a well-known and readily acknowledged maxim. Women grow pretty from looking in the glass; why should not men grow brave from constantly contemplating their own courage?