At the head of the table sat a large and strikingly handsome man, of about eight-and-thirty or forty years of age—his dress a dark frock, richly braided, and ornamented by the decorations of several foreign orders; his forehead high and narrow, the temples strongly indented; his nose arched and thin, and his upper lip covered by a short black moustache raised at either extremity and slightly curled, as we see occasionally in a Van Dyck picture; indeed, his dark-brown features, somewhat sad in their expression, his rich hazel eyes and long waving hair, gave him all the character that great artist loved to perpetuate on his canvas. He spoke seldom, but when he did there was something indescribably pleasing in the low, mellow tones of his voice; a slight smile too lit up his features at these times, and his manner had in it—I know not what; some strange power it seemed, that made whoever he addressed feel pleased and flattered by his notice of them, just as we see a few words spoken by a sovereign caught up and dwelt upon by those around.
At his side sat a lady, of whom when I first came into the room I took little notice; her features seemed pleasing, but no more. But gradually, as I watched her I was struck by the singular delicacy of traits that rarely make their impression at first sight. She was about twenty-five, perhaps twenty-six, but of a character of looks that preserves something almost childish in their beauty. She was pale, and with brown hair—that light sunny brown that varies in its hue with every degree of light upon it; her face was oval and inclined to plumpness; her eyes were large, full, and lustrous, with an expression of softness and candour that won on you wonderfully the longer you looked at them; her nose was short, perhaps faultily so, but beautifully chiselled, and fine as a Greek statue; her mouth, rather large, displayed, however, two rows of teeth beautifully regular and of snowy whiteness; while her chin, rounded and dimpled, glided by an easy transition into a throat large and most gracefully formed. Her figure, as well as I could judge, was below the middle size, and inclined to embonpoint; and her dress, denoting some national peculiarity of which I was ignorant, was a velvet bodice laced in front and ornamented with small silver buttons, which terminated in a white muslin skirt; a small cap, something like what Mary Queen of Scots is usually represented in, sat on the back of her head and fell in deep lace folds on her shoulders. Lastly, her hands were small, white, and dimpled, and displayed on her taper and rounded fingers several rings of apparently great value.
I have been somewhat lengthy in my description of these two persons, and can scarcely ask my reader to accompany me round the circle; however, it is with them principally I have to do. The others at table were remarkable enough. There was a leading member of the Chamber of Deputies—an ex-minister—a tall, dark-browed, ill-favoured man, with a retiring forehead and coal-black eyes; he was a man of great cleverness, spoke eloquently and well, and was singularly open and frank in giving his opinion on the politics of the time. There was a German or two, from the grand-duchy of something—somewhat proud, reserved personages, as all the Germans of petty states are; they talked little, and were evidently impressed with the power they possessed of tantalising the company by not divulging the intention of the Gross Herzog of Hoch Donnerstadt regarding the present prospects of Europe. There were three Frenchmen and two French ladies, all pleasant, easy, and affable people; there was a doctor from Louvain, a shrewd, intelligent man; a Prussian major and his wife—well-bred, quiet people, and, like all Prussians, polite without inviting acquaintance. An Austrian secretary of legation, a wine-merchant from Bordeaux, and a celebrated pianist completed the party.
I have now put my readers in possession of information which I only obtained after some days myself; for though one or other of these personages was occasionally absent from table d’hôte, I soon perceived that they were all frequenters of the house, and well known there.
If the guests were seated at table wherever chance or accident might place them, I could perceive that a tone of deference was always used to the tall man, who invariably maintained his place at the head; and an air of even greater courtesy was assumed towards the lady beside him, who was his wife. He was always addressed as Monsieur le Comte, and her title of Countess was never forgotten in speaking to her. During dinner, whatever little chit-chat or gossip was the talk of the day was specially offered up to her. The younger guests occasionally ventured to present a bouquet, and even the rugged minister himself accomplished a more polite bow in accosting her than he could have summoned up for his presentation to royalty. To all these little attentions she returned a smile or a look or a word, or a gesture with her white hand, never exciting jealousy by any undue degree of favour, and distributing her honours with the practised equanimity of one accustomed to it.
Dinner over and coffee, a handsome britzka, drawn by two splendid dark-bay horses, would drive up, and Madame la Comtesse, conducted to the carriage by her husband, would receive the homage of the whole party, as they stood to let her pass. The count would then linger some twenty minutes or so, and take his leave to wander for an hour about the park, and afterwards to the theatre, where I used to see him in a private box with his wife.
Such was the little party at the ‘France’ when I took up my residence there in the month of May, and gradually one dropped off after another as the summer wore on. The Germans went back to sauer kraut and kreutzer whist; the secretary of legation was on leave; the wine-merchant was off to St. Petersburg; the pianist was in the bureau he once directed—and so on, leaving our party reduced to the count and madame, a stray traveller, a deaf abbé, and myself.
The dog-days in a Continental city are, every one knows, stupid and tiresome enough. Every one has taken his departure either to his château, if he has one, or to the watering-places; the theatre has no attraction, even if the heat permitted one to visit it; the streets are empty, parched, and grass-grown; and except the arrival and departure of that incessant locomotive, John Bull, there is no bustle or stir anywhere. Hapless, indeed, is the condition then of the man who is condemned from any accident to toil through this dreary season; to wander about in solitude the places he has seen filled by pleasant company; to behold the park and promenades given up to Flemish bonnes or Norman nurses, where he was wont to glad his eye with the sight of bright eyes and trim shapes, flitting past in all the tasty elegance of Parisian toilette; to see the lazy frotteur sleeping away his hours at the porte cochere, which a month before thundered with the deep roll of equipage coming and going. All this is very sad, and disposes one to be dull and discontented too.
For what reason I was detained at Brussels it is unnecessary to inquire. Some delay in remittances, if I remember aright, had its share in the cause. Who ever travelled without having cursed his banker or his agent or his uncle or his guardian, or somebody, in short, who had a deal of money belonging to him in his hands, and would not send it forward? In all my long experience of travelling and travellers, I don’t remember meeting with one person, who, if it were not for such mischances, would not have been amply supplied with cash. Some with a knowing wink throw the blame on the ‘Governor’; others, more openly indignant, confound Coutts and Drummond; a stray Irishman will now and then damn the ‘tenantry that haven’t paid up the last November’; but none, no matter how much their condition bespeaks that out-at-elbows habit which a ways-and-means style of life contracts, will ever confess to the fact that their expectations are as blank as their banker’s book, and that the only land they are ever to pretend to is a post-obit right in some six-feet-by-two in a churchyard. And yet the world is full of such people—well-informed, pleasant, good-looking folk, who inhabit first-rate hotels; drink, dine, and dress well; frequent theatres and promenades; spend their winters at Paris or Florence or Rome, their summers at Baden or Ems or Interlachen; have a strange half-intimacy with men in the higher circles, and occasionally dine with them; are never heard of in any dubious or unsafe affair; are reputed safe fellows to talk to; know every one, from the horse-dealer who will give credit to the Jew who will advance cash; and notwithstanding that they neither gamble nor bet nor speculate, yet contrive to live—ay, and well, too—without any known resources whatever. If English (and they are for the most part so), they usually are called by some well-known name of aristocratic reputation in England: they are thus Villiers or Paget or Seymour or Percy, which on the Continent is already a kind of half-nobility at once; and the question which seemingly needs no reply, ‘Ah, vous êtes parent de milord!’ is a receipt in full rank anywhere.
These men—and who that knows anything of the Continent has not met such everywhere—are the great riddles of our century; and I ‘d rather give a reward for their secret than all the discoveries about perpetual motion, or longitude, or North-west Passages, that ever were heard of. And strange it is, too, no one has ever blabbed. Some have emerged from this misty state to inherit large fortunes and live in the best style; yet I have never heard of a single man having turned king’s evidence on his fellows. And yet what a talent theirs must be, let any man confess who has waited three posts for a remittance without any tidings of its arrival! Think of the hundred-and-one petty annoyances and ironies to which he is subject! He fancies that the very waiters know he is à sec; that the landlord looks sour, and the landlady austere; the very clerk in the post-office appears to say, ‘No letter for you, sir,’ with a jibing and impertinent tone. From that moment, too, a dozen expensive tastes that he never dreamed of before enter his head: he wants to purchase a hack or give a dinner-party or bet at a racecourse, principally because he has not got a sou in his pocket, and he is afraid it may be guessed by others—such is the fatal tendency to strive or pretend to something which has no other value in our eyes than the effect it may have on our acquaintances, regardless of what sacrifices it may demand.