“To Cornelius Cregan, Esq.”
This was a sad damper! To think that I was to lose the immense amount of property with which I had embarked,—the gems and jewels, the rare objects of art, the equipages, the beautiful horses of purest Mexican blood! not to speak of that far greater loss,—the large sum in actual money! But, then, what a consolation to remember that a Secretary of State was mingling his sorrows with my own on the subject; that he actually gave an official character to his grief, by desiring the Under-Secretary to convey “his regrets” in a despatch! his regrets—to me, Con Cregan! What inestimable words! That ever I should live to know that the Right Honorable Lord Puzzleton, the adored cherub of fashion, the admired of coteries, the worshipped of “the Commons,” the favored guest of Windsor, should, under the big seal of his office, assure me of his heartfelt sympathy!
I closed my eyes as I read the paragraph, and imagined that we were weeping together, like the “Babes in the Wood.” “How they wrong this man,” thought I, “in England; what calumnies they circulate about his levity, his heartlessness, and so forth; and see! look at him here mingling in the private sorrows of an individual, and taking part in all the private woes of Con Cregan.” By this beautiful artifice I contrived to raise the aforesaid Con to a very considerable elevation in his own esteem; and thus, worthy reader, by pleasant fancies and ingenious illusions,—wares that every man can fashion at will,—did I contrive to make my prison at Malaga a most endurable resting-place, and even now to make its retrospect full of sweet memories.
Nor were my imaginings limited to such visions as these, for I loved to compare my condition with that of other exalted prisoners, and fancy how my conduct would read by the side of theirs. If I were less piously resigned, less submissive, than Silvio Pellico, assuredly I showed more dignity in my fall than the Exile of St. Helena. I bore all the little vexations of my lot with a haughty reserve that entirely subdued every sign of a querulous nature, and seemed to say, “My time will come yet!”
At last it appeared either as if my memorials were never opened, or, if opened, never read. No answer came whatever! and even the Malaga newspapers, which, in the dearth of shipping intelligence, would often insert some little notice of me, stating how “the 'Conde' walked yesterday for an hour upon 'the leads';” “the 'Condé' partook with an appetite of a partridge, and conversed freely with the officer on duty,” and so on,—now they never by any chance alluded to me; and I seemed, for all the interest the world manifested about me, to have suffered a species of moral decease. It was the unhealthy season of the year, and the Consul had absented himself, leaving his functions to his “Vice,” who, having also a “constitution,” had departed likewise, bequeathing the traditions and cares of office to his Dutch colleague, who neither spoke nor read any other tongue than that muddy language begotten of dikes and fogs. Wearied possibly by the daily arrival of half a quire of my remonstrances, or curious to see the machine by which these broad sheets were struck off with such unfailing celerity, this official arrived one day at the prison with an order from the Governor, permitting him to see the “Condé.”
I was, as usual, writing away, when the turnkey announced his Excellency (every official is Excellency if too low for Highness), Mynheer van Hoagendrius, and a very short and immensely fat personage, dressed in a kind of black-and-white plaid jacket and trousers, entered. He looked like a huge chess-board set on legs. A grunt, a snort, a thick sound like a struggle between choking and gurgling, ensued, which I concluded to be something in Dutch, and he seated himself opposite me.
I made my compliments to him, polyglot-wise, in French, English, Spanish, and at last German,—the last evidently striking a spark out of the embers of his cold intelligence, for he fixed his dull eyes upon me, and seemed as though he would soon wake up. Animated by this hope, I proceeded in my very best “Deutsch” to expound my sorrows to him. Fortunately for me, my German had been acquired in the low companionship of “skippers” and sailors, and consequently bore a nearer resemblance to its half-brother of Holland than the more cultivated tongues of professors and philosophers.
I cannot, to this hour, say whether it arose from any interest in the narrative, or whether proceeding from the laudable desire to come at the truth in a question of much difficulty, but the Mynheer now came to me each morning, and usually stayed two hours, during which I talked and he smoked incessantly. Often, when he left me, have I asked myself “what progress I had made in his good opinion? how far had I made him master of my case?” but the question remained without an answer; for if occasionally a stray flash of intelligence would light up his dull features, on following the direction of his eyes I could perceive that the animation arose from the sight of some fishing-boat returning loaded with turbot, or that the savory odor of salt cod had saluted him from the shore. I felt at length as though I were sailing without a log-line,—nothing to mark my progress or say in what latitude I cruised.
My Dutch friend had now been visiting me for above six weeks, during which, if he had not supplied himself with every detail of my calamity, he had at least smoked all the choice tobacco which, as a favor from the Governor, I was permitted to land for my own use; and as yet he had given no signs of life other than the act of fumigation aforesaid. I was half angry, half amused, at the little act of dexterity with which he emptied the last remnant of my pure Havannah into his pipe, and heard, with a kind of malicious satisfaction, the little sigh with which he pushed the empty canister from him.
He seemed lost for some time in the slough of his Dutch reflections, but at length he fixed his eyes upon me, and in a low, suffocating tone said, “Hast a file?”