My father hastily snatches the letter from his hands, and runs his eye rapidly along to catch the passage which shall confute the objector and cover him with shame and confusion. He cannot find it at once. “It is this. No, it is on this side. Very strange, very singular indeed; but as Algernon must have told me—” Alas! no, father, he has not told you, and for the simple reason that he does not know it himself. For though I mentioned with becoming pride the prominent stations Irishmen now hold in most of the great states of Europe, and pointed to O'Donnel in Spain, MacMahon in France, and the Field-Marshal Nugent in Austria, I utterly forgot to designate the high post occupied by Potts in the Duchy of Hesse-Kalbbratonstadt. To determine what this should be was now of imminent importance, and I gave myself up to the solution with a degree of intentness and an amount of concentration that set me off sound asleep.
Yes, benevolent reader, I will confess it, questions of a complicated character have always affected me, as the inside of a letter seems to have struck Tony Lumkin,—“all buzz.” I start with the most loyal desire to be acute and penetrating; I set myself to my task with as honest a disposition to do my best as ever man did; I say, “Now, Potts, no self-indulgence, no skulking; here is a knotty problem, here is a case for your best faculties in their sharpest exercise;” and if any one come in upon me about ten minutes after this resolve, he will see a man who could beat Sancho Panza in sleeping!
Of course this tendency has often cost me dearly; I have missed appointments, forgotten assignations, lost friends through it. My character, too, has suffered, many deeming me insupportably indolent, a sluggard quite unfit for any active employment. Others, more mercifully hinting at some “cerebral cause,” have done me equal damage; but there happily is an obverse on the medal, and to this somnolency do I ascribe much of the gentleness and all the romance of my nature. It is your sleepy man is ever benevolent, he loves ease and quiet for others as for himself. What he cultivates is the tranquil mood that leads to slumber, and the calm that sustains it. The very operations of the mind in sleep are broken, incoherent, undelineated,—just like the waking occupations of an idle man; they are thoughts that cost so little to manufacture, that he can afford to be lavish of them. And now—Good-night!
CHAPTER XIII. I CALL AT THE BRITISH LEGATION.
Breakfast over, I took a walk through the town. Though in a measure prepared for a scene of unbustling quietude and tranquillity, I must own that the air of repose around, far surpassed all I had imagined. The streets through which I sauntered were grass-grown and untrodden; the shops were but half open; not an equipage, nor even a horseman was to be seen. In the Platz, where a sort of fruit-market was held, a few vendors of grapes, peaches, and melons sat under large crimson umbrellas, but there seemed few purchasers, except a passing schoolboy, carefully scanning the temptations in which he was about to invest his kreutzer.
The most remarkable feature of the place, however, and it is one which, through a certain significance, has always held its place in my memory, was that, go where one would, the palace of the Grand-Duke was sure to finish the view at one extremity of the street. In fact, every alley converged to this one centre, and the royal residence stood like the governor's chamber in a panopticon jail. There did my mind for many a day picture him sitting like a huge spider watching the incautious insects that permeated his web. I imagined him fat, indolent, and apathetic, but yet, with a jailer's instincts, ever mindful of every stir and movement of the prisoners below. With a very ordinary telescope he must be master of everything that went on, and the humblest incident could not escape his notice. Was it the consciousness of this surveillance that made every one keep the house? Was it the feeling that the “Gross Herzogliche” eye never left them, that prevented men being abroad in the streets and about their affairs as in other places? I half suspected this, and set to work imagining a state of society thus scanned and scrutinized. But that the general aspect of the town so palpably proclaimed the absence of all trade and industry, I might have compared the whole to a glass hive; but they were all drones that dwelt there, there was not one “busy bee” in the whole of them.
When I rambled thus carelessly along, I came in front of a sort of garden fenced from the street by an iron railing. The laurel and arbutus, and even the oleander, were there, gracefully blending a varied foliage, and contrasting in their luxuriant liberty so pleasantly with the dull uniformity outside. Finding a gate wide open, I strolled in, and gave myself up to the delicious enjoyment of the spot. As I was deliberating whether this was a public garden or not, I found myself before a long, low, villa-like building, with a colonnade in front. Over the entrance was a large shield, which on nearer approach I recognized to contain the arms of England. This, therefore, was the legation, the residence of our minister, Sir Shalley Doubleton. I felt a very British pride and satisfaction to see our representative lodged so splendidly. With all the taxpayer's sentiment in my heart, I rejoiced to think that he who personated the nation should, in all his belongings, typify the wealth, the style, and the grandeur of England, and in the ardor of this enthusiasm, I hastened back to the inn for the despatch-bag.
Armed with this, and a card, I soon presented myself at the door. On the card I had written, “Mr. Pottinger presents his respectful compliments, and requests his Excellency will favor him with an audience of a few minutes for an explanation.”
I had made up my mind to state that my servant, in removing my smaller luggage from the train, had accidentally carried off this Foreign Office bag, which, though at considerable inconvenience, I had travelled much out of my way to restore in person. I had practised this explanation as I dressed in the morning, I had twice rehearsed it to an orange-tree in the garden, before which I had bowed till my back ached, and I fancied myself perfect in my part. It would, I confess, have been a great relief to me to have had only the slightest knowledge of the great personage before whom I was about to present myself, to have known was he short or tall, young or old, solemn or easy-mannered, had he a loud voice and an imperious tone, or was he of the soft and silky order of his craft. I'd have willingly entertained his “gentleman” at a moderate repast for some information on these points, but there was no time for the inquiry, and so I rang boldly at the bell. The door opened of itself at the summons, and I found myself in a large hall with a plaster cast of the Laocoon, and nothing else. I tried several of the doors on either side, but they were all locked. A very handsome and spacious stair of white marble led up from the middle of the hall; but I hesitated about venturing to ascend this, and once more repaired to the bell outside, and repeated my summons. The loud clang re-echoed through the arched hall, the open door gave a responsive shake, and that was all. No one came; everything was still as before. I was rather chagrined at this. The personal inconvenience was less offensive than the feeling how foreigners would comment on such want of propriety, what censures they would pass on such an ill-arranged household. I rang again, this time with an energy that made the door strike some of the plaster from the wall, and, with a noise like cannon, “What the hangman”—I am translating—“is all this?” cried a voice thick with passion; and, on looking up, I saw a rather elderly man, with a quantity of curly yellow hair, frowning savagely on me from the balcony over the stair. He made no sign of coming down, but gazed sternly at me from his eminence.