When Jack Bramleigh had told that he was going to take command of a small gunboat in the Mediterranean, he could not help going further, and telling with what a heavy heart he was going to assume his command. “We sailors have a hard lot of it,” said he; “we come home after a cruise—all is new, brilliant, and attractive to us. Our hearts are not steeled, as are landsmen's, by daily habit. We are intoxicated by what calmer heads scarcely feel excited. We fall in love, and then, some fine day, comes an Admiralty despatch ordering us to hunt slavers off Lagos, or fish for a lost cable in Behring's Straits.”
“Never mind,” said the other; “so long as there 's a goal to reach, so long as there's a prize to win, all can be borne. It's only when life is a shoreless ocean—when, seek where you will, no land will come in sight—when, in fact, existence offers nothing to speculate on—then, indeed, the world is a dreary blank.”
“I don't suppose any fellow's lot is as bad as that.”
“Not perhaps completely, thoroughly so; but that a man's fate can approach such a condition—that a man can cling to so small a hope that he is obliged to own to himself that it is next to no hope at all,—that there could be, and is, such a lot in existence, I who speak to you now am able unfortunately to vouch for.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” said Jack, feelingly; “and I am sorry, besides, to have obtruded my own small griefs before one who has such a heavy affliction.”
“Remember,” said the Frenchman, “I never said it was all up with me. I have a plank still to cling to, though it be only a plank. My case is simply this: I have come over to this country to prefer a claim to a large property, and I have nothing to sustain it but my right. I know well you Englishmen have a theory that your laws are so admirably and so purely administered that if a man asks for justice,—be he poor, or unknown, or a foreigner, it matters not,—he is sure to obtain it. I like the theory, and I respect the man who believes in it, but I don't trust it myself. I remember reading in your debates, how the House of Lords sat for days over a claim of a French nobleman who had been ruined by the great Revolution in France, and for whose aid, with others, a large sum had once been voted, of which, through a series of misadventures, not a shilling had reached him. That man's claim, upheld and maintained by one of the first men in England, and with an eloquence that thrilled through every heart around, was rejected, ay, rejected, and he was sent out of court a beggar. They could n't call him an impostor, but they left him to starve!” He paused for a secondhand in a slower voice continued, “Now, it may be that my case shall one of these days be heard before that tribunal, and I ask you, does it not call for great courage and great trustfulness to have a hope on the issue?”
“I'll stake my head on it, they'll deal fairly by you,” said Jack, stoutly.
“The poor baron I spoke of had powerful friends: men who liked him well, and fairly believed in his claim. Now I am utterly unknown, and as devoid of friends as of money. I think nineteen out of twenty Englishmen would call me an adventurer to-morrow; and there are few titles that convey less respect in this grand country of yours.”
“There you are right; every one here must have a place in society, and be in it.”
“My landlady where I lodged thought me an adventurer; the tailor who measured me whispered adventurer as he went downstairs; and when a cabman, in gratitude for an extra sixpence, called me 'count,' it was to proclaim me an adventurer to all who heard him.”