The room in which I now found myself was a long, and for its length a narrow, apartment; a range of tall windows, deeply sunk in the thick wall, occupied one side, opposite to which was a plain wall covered with pictures from floor to cornice, save where, at a considerable distance from one another, were two splendidly carved chimney-pieces of black oak, one representing ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds,’ and the other ‘The Miraculous Draught of Fishes’—the latter done with a relief, a vigour, and a movement I have never seen equalled. Above these were some armorial trophies of an early date, in which, among the maces and battle-axes, I could recognise some weapons of Eastern origin, which by the family, I learned, were ascribed to the periods of the Crusades.
Between the windows were placed a succession of carved oak cabinets of the seventeenth century—beautiful specimens of art, and for all their quaintness far handsomer objects of furniture than our modern luxury has introduced among us. Japan vases of dark blue-and-green were filled with rare flowers; here and there small tables of costly buhl invited you to the window recesses, where the downy ottomans, pillowed with Flemish luxury, suggested rest if not sleep. The pictures, over which I could but throw a passing glance, were all by Flemish painters, and of that character which so essentially displays their chief merits of richness of colour and tone—Gerard Dow and Ostade, Cuyp, Van der Meer, and Terburg—those admirable groupings of domestic life, where the nation is, as it were, miniatured before you; that perfection of domestic quiet, which bespeaks an heirloom of tranquillity derived whole centuries back. You see at once, in those dark-brown eyes and placid features, the traits that have taken ages to bring to such perfection; and you recognise the origin of those sturdy burgomasters and bold burghers, who were at the same time the thriftiest merchants and the haughtiest princes of Europe.
Suddenly, and when I was almost on my knees to examine a picture by Memling, the door opened, and a small, sharp-looking man, dressed in the last extravagance of Paris mode, resplendent in waistcoat and glistening in jewellery, tripped lightly forward. ‘Ah, mi Lor O’Leary!’ said he, advancing towards me with a bow and a slide.
It was no time to discuss pedigree; so gulping the promotion, I made my acknowledgments as best I could; and by the time that we met, which on a moderate calculation might have been two minutes after he entered, we shook hands very cordially, and looked delighted to see each other. This ceremony, I repeat, was only accomplished after his having bowed round two tables, an ottoman, and an oak armoire, I having performed the like ceremony behind a Chinese screen, and very nearly over a vase of the original ‘green dragon,’ which actually seemed disposed to spring at me for my awkwardness.
Before my astonishment—shall I add, disappointment?—had subsided, at finding that the diminutive, overdressed figure before me was the representative of those bold barons I had been musing over (for such he was), the room began to fill. Portly ladies of undefined dates sailed in and took their places, stiff, stately, and silent as their grandmothers on the walls; heavy-looking gentlemen, with unpronounceable names, bowed and wheeled and bowed again; while a buzz of votre serviteur, madame, or monsieur, swelled and sank amid the murmur of the room, with the scraping of feet on the glazed parquet, and the rustle of silk, whose plenitude bespoke a day when silkworms were honest.
The host paraded me around the austere circle, where the very names sounded like an incantation; and the old ladies shook their bugles and agitated their fans in recognition of my acquaintance. The circumstances of my adventure were the conversation of every group; and although, I confess, I could not help feeling that even a small spice of malice might have found food for laughter in the absurdity of my durance, yet not one there could see anything in the whole affair save a grave case of smuggled tobacco, and a most unwarrantable exercise of authority on the part of the curé who liberated me. Indeed, this latter seemed to gain ground so rapidly, that once or twice I began to fear they might remand me and sentence me to another night in the air, ‘till justice should be satisfied.’ I did the worthy Maire de Givet foul wrong, said I to myself; these people here are not a whit better.
The company continued to arrive at every moment; and now I remarked that it was the veteran battalion who led the march, the younger members of the household only dropping in as the hour grew later. Among these was a pleasant sprinkling of Frenchmen, as easily recognisable among Flemings as is an officer of the Blues from one of the new police; a German baron, a very portrait of his class, fat, heavy-browed, sulky-looking, but in reality a good-hearted, fine-tempered fellow; two Americans; an English colonel, with his daughters twain; and a Danish chargé d’ affaires—the minor characters being what, in dramatic phrase, are called premiers and premieres, meaning thereby young people of either sex, dressed in the latest mode, and performing the part of lovers; the ladies, with a moderate share of good looks, being perfect in the freshness of their toilette and in a certain air of ease and gracefulness almost universal abroad; the men, a strange mixture of silliness and savagery (a bad cross), half hairdresser, half hero.
Before the dinner was announced, I had time to perceive that the company was divided into two different and very opposite currents—one party consisting of the old Dutch or Flemish race, quiet, plodding, peaceable souls, pretending to nothing new, enjoying everything old, their souvenirs referring to some event in the time of their grandfathers; the other section being the younger portion, who, strongly imbued with French notions on dress and English on sporting matters, attempted to bring Newmarket and the Boulevards des Italiens into the heart of the Ardennes.
Between the two, and connecting them with each other, was a species of pont du diable, in the person of a little, dapper, olive-complexioned man of about forty. His eyes were black as jet, but with an expression soft and subdued, save at moments of excitement, when they flashed like glow-worms; his plain suit of black with deep cambric ruffles, his silk shorts and buckled shoes, had in them something of the ecclesiastic; and so it was. He was the Abbé van Praet, the cadet of an ancient Belgian family, a man of considerable ability, highly informed on most subjects; a linguist, a musician, a painter of no small pretensions, who spent his life in the far niente of château existence—now devising a party of pleasure, now inventing a madrigal, now giving directions to the chef how to make an omelette à la curé, now stealing noiselessly along some sheltered walk to hear some fair lady’s secret confidence; for he was privy counsellor in all affairs of the heart, and, if the world did not wrong him, occasionally pleaded his own cause when no other petitioner offered. I was soon struck by this man, and by the tact with which, while he preserved his ascendency over the minds of all, he never admitted any undue familiarity, yet affected all the ease and insouciance of the veriest idler. I was flattered, also, by his notice of me, and by the politeness of his invitation to sit next him at table.
The distinctions I have hinted at already, made the dinner conversation a strange medley of Flemish history and sporting anecdotes; of reminiscences of the times of Maria Theresa, and dissertations on weights and ages; of the genealogies of Flemish families, and the pedigrees of English racehorses. The young English ladies, both pretty and delicate-looking girls, with an air of good-breeding and tone in their manner, shocked me not a little by the intimate knowledge they displayed on all matters of the turf and the stable—their acquaintance with the details of hunting, racing, and steeplechasing, seeming to form the most wonderful attraction to the moustached counts and whiskered barons who listened to them. The colonel was a fine, mellow-looking old gentleman, with a white head and a red nose, and with that species of placid expression one sees in the people who perform those parts in Vaudeville theatres called pères nobles. He seemed, indeed, as if he had been daily in the habit of bestowing a lovely daughter on some happy, enraptured lover, and invoking a blessing on their heads; there was a rich unction in his voice, an almost imperceptible quaver, that made it seem kind and affectionate; he finished his shake of the hand with a little parting squeeze, a kind of ‘one cheer more,’ as they say nowadays, when some misguided admirer calls upon a meeting for enthusiasm they don’t feel. The Americans were (and one description will serve for both, so like were they) sallow, high-boned, silent men, with a species of quiet caution in their manner, as if they were learning, but had not yet completed, a European education as to habits and customs, and were studiously careful not to commit any solecisms which might betray their country.