“How they found me out a patient in a ward of the Hôtel Dieu, rescued and carried me away with them, I have heard full half a dozen times, but I 'm far from being clear enough to repeat the story; and, indeed, when I try to recall the period, the only images which rise up before me are long ranges of white coverlids, pale faces, and groans and cries of suffering, with the dark curly head of a great master of torture peeping at me, and whom, I am told, is the Baron Dupuytren, the Surgeon-in-Chief. After these comes a vision of litters and charrettes,—sore joltings and stoppages to drink water—But I shall rave if I go on. Better I should tell you of my pleasant little bedroom here, opening on a small garden, with a tiny fountain trying to sprinkle the wild myrtle and blush-roses around it, and sportively sending its little plash over me, as the wind wafts it into my chamber. My luxurious chair and easy-cushioned sofa, and my table littered with everything, from flowers to French romances; not to speak of the small rustic seat beside the window, where she has been sitting the last hour, and has only quitted to give me time to write this to you. I know it—I see it—all you can say, all that you are saying at this moment, is fifty times more forcibly echoing within my own heart, and repeating in fitful sentences: 'A ruined man—a broken fortune—a mad attachment—a life of struggle, difficulty, and failure!' But why should it be failure? Such a girl for a wife ought in itself to be an earnest of success. Are not her qualities exactly those that do battle with the difficulties of fortune? Self-denial—ambition—courage—an intense, an intuitive knowledge of the world—and then, a purpose-like devotion to whatever she undertakes, that throws an air of heroism over all her actions.
“Birth—blood—family connections—what have they done for me, except it be to entail upon me the necessity of selecting a career amidst the two or three that are supposed to suit the well-born? I may be a Life Guardsman, or an unpaid attaché, but I must not be a physician or a merchant. Nor is it alone that certain careers are closed against us, but certain opinions too. I must not think ill of the governing class,—I must never think well of the governed.
“Well, Harry, the colonies are the remedy for all this. There, at least, a man can fashion existence as arbitrarily as he can the shape and size of his house. None shall dictate his etiquette, no more than his architecture; and I am well weary of the slavery of this old-world life, with our worship of old notions and old china, both because they are cracked, damaged, and useless. I 'll marry her. I have made up my mind on 't. Spare me all your remonstrances, all your mock compassion. Nor is it like a fellow who has not seen the world in its best gala suit, affecting to despise rank, splendor, and high station. I have seen the thing. I have cantered my thoroughbred along Rotten Row, eaten my truffled dinners in Belgravia, whispered my nonsense over the white shoulders of the fairest and best-born of England's daughters. I know to a decimal fraction the value of all these; and, what 's more, I know what one pays for them,—the miserable vassalage, the poor slavery of mind, soul, and body they cost!
“It is the terror of exclusion here, the dread of coldness there—the possibility of offence to 'his Grace' on this side, or misconception by 'her Ladyship' on that—sway and rule a man so that he may neither eat, drink, nor sleep without a 'Court Guide' in his pocket. I 've done with it! now and forever,—I tell you frankly,—I return no more to this bondage.
“I have written a farewell address to my worthy constituents of Oughterard. I have told them that, 'feeling an instinct of independence within me, I can no longer remain their representative; that, as a man of honor, I shrink from the jobbery of the little borough politicians, and, as a gentleman, I beg to decline their intimacy.' They took me for want of a better—I leave them for the same reason.
“To my father I have said: 'Let us make a compromise. As your son I have a claim on the House. Now, what will you give for my share? I 'll neither importune you for place, nor embarrass you with solicitations for employment. Help me to stock my knapsack, and I 'll find my road myself.' She knows nothing of these steps on my part; nor shall she, till they have become irrevocable. She is too proud ever to consent to what would cost me thus heavily; but the expense once incurred,—the outlay made,—she cannot object to what has become the law of my future life.
“I send off these two documents to-night; this done, I shall write to her an offer of marriage. What a fever I 'm in! and all because I feel the necessity of defending myself to you,—to you of all men the most headstrong, reckless, and self-indulgent,—a fellow who never curbed a caprice nor restrained a passing fancy; and yet you are just the man to light your cigar, and while you puff away your blue cloud, mutter on about rashness, folly, insanity, and the rest of it, as if the state of your bank account should make that wisdom in you, which with me is but mere madness! But I tell you, Harry, it is your very thousands per annum that preclude you from doing what I can. It is your house in town, your stud at Tattersall's, your yacht at Cowes, your grouse-lodge in the Highlands, that tie and fetter you to live like some scores of others, with whom you have n't one solitary sympathy, save in income! You are bound up in all the recognizances of your wealth to dine stupidly, sup languidly, and sink down at last into a marriage of convenience,—to make a wife of her whom 'her Grace' has chosen for you without a single speculation in the contract save the thought of the earl you will be allied to, and the four noble families you 'll have the right to go in mourning for.
“And what worse than cant it is to talk of what they call an indiscreet match! What does—what can the world know as to the reasons that impel you, or me, or anybody else, to form a certain attachment? Are they acquainted with our secret and most hidden emotions? Do they understand the project of life we have planned to ourselves? Have they read our utter weariness and contempt for forms that they venerate, and social distinctions that they worship? I am aware that in some cases it requires courage to do this; and in doing it a man virtually throws down the glove to the whole world, and says, 'This woman's love is to me more than all of you'—and so say I at this moment. I must cry halt, I see, Harry. I have set these nerves at work in my wound, and the pain is agony. Tomorrow—to-night, if I 'm able—I shall continue.
“Midnight.” They have just wished me good-night, after having spent the evening here reading out the newspapers for me, commenting upon them, and exerting themselves to amuse me in a hundred good-natured ways. You would like this same stately old Lady Dorothea. She is really 'Grande Dame' in every respect,—dress, air, carriage, gesture, even her slow and measured speech is imposing, and her prejudices, uttered as they are in such perfect sincerity of heart, have something touching about them, and her sorrowful pity for the mob sounded more gracefully than Kate's enthusiastic estimate of their high deservings. It does go terribly against the grain to fancy an alliance between coarse natures and noble sentiments, and to believe in the native nobility of those who never touch soap! I have had a kind of skirmish with La Henderson upon this theme to-night. She was cross and out of temper, and bore my bantering badly. The fact is, she is utterly disgusted at the turn things have taken in France; and not altogether without reason, since, after all their bluster and bloodshed and barricades, they have gone back to a monarchy again. They barred out the master to make 'the head usher' top of the school. Let us see if he won't be as fond of the birch as his predecessor. Like all mutineers, they found they could n't steer the ship when they had murdered the captain! How hopeless it makes one of humanity to see such a spectacle as this, Harry, and how low is one's estimate of the species after such experience! You meet some half-dozen semi-bald, spectacled old gentlemen in society, somewhat more reserved than the rest of the company, fond of talking to each other, and rather distrustful of strangers; you find them slow conversers at dinner, sorry whist-players in the drawing-room; you are told, however, that one is a President of the Council, another the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and a third something equally important. You venerate them accordingly, while you mutter the old Swede's apothegm about the 'small intelligences' that rule mankind. Wait awhile! There is a row in the streets: a pickpocket has appealed to the public to rescue him from the ignoble hands of the police; an escaped felon has fired at the judge who sentenced him, in the name of Liberty and Fraternity. No matter what the cause, there is a row. The troops are called out; some are beaten, some join the insurgents. The government grows frightened—temporizes—offers terms—and sends for more soldiers. The people—I never clearly knew what the word meant—the people make extravagant demands, and will not even give time to have them granted,—in a word, the whole state is subverted, the king, if there be one, in flight, the royal family missing, the ministers nowhere! No great loss you 'll say, if the four or five smooth-faced imbecilities we have spoken of are not to the fore! But there is your error, Harry,—your great error. These men, used to conduct and carry on the government, cannot be replaced. The new capacities do nothing but blunder, and maybe issue contradictory orders and impede each other's actions. To improvise a Secretary of State is about as wise a proceeding as to take at hazard a third-class passenger and set him to guide the engine of a train. The only difference is that the machinery of state is ten thousand times more complex than that of a steam-engine, and the powers for mischief and misfortune in due proportion.
“But why talk of these things? I have had enough and too much of them already this evening; women, too, are unpleasant disputants in politics. They attach their faith to persons, not parties. Miss Henderson is, besides, a little spoiled by the notice of those maxim-mongers who write leaders in the 'Débats, and articles for the 'Deux Mondes.' They have, or affect to have, a kind of pitying estimate for our English constitutional forms, which is rather offensive. At least, she provoked me, and I am relapsing into bad temper, just by thinking of it.