‘Well,’ cried Lord Lofty, who with a bevy of puppies like himself occupied a box at no great distance; ‘Well, sir, and if your Pipe is smoked, can’t you light another?’
The laughter of some of the audience was raised by this sally of miserable wit, which from what followed seemed to have been a preconcerted signal for an indiscriminate attack on the tragedy. The thread of approval being once broken it appeared impossible to reunite it. Hisses, groans, and peals of laughter now rose at the finest passages. The gods, who are ever ready to join in a tumult, without nicely inquiring into the cause, yelled aloud for the instant condemnation of the whole concern. Lofty and his gang joined them clamourosly in this demand, and at length the uproar rose to such a pitch that Mr. Price was compelled to come forward to the footlights and declare that since the audience disapproved of the play he consented to withdraw it.
‘All hope of fame is gone and I desire to live no longer,’ said Hamilton, turning on the marquis his corpse-like countenance.
‘Courage, Edwin,’ replied the latter. ‘It is part of my creed that there is no wound too deep to receive relief from the divine balsam of revenge. I know who is your principal foe, and if I live you shall enjoy the remedy in perfection.’
It was a bright and lovely afternoon in the midst of autumn. The saloons of Waterloo Palace were thrown open for the admission of all the rank and fashion of Verdopolis. The doors of the great library were likewise unfolded, and there a knot of bel-esprits, the very flower of Africa’s geniuses, had gathered round a large open bow-window through which might be seen the extensive pleasure-grounds where groups of the brighter children of fashion roamed idly about or reposed under the shade of sequestered bowers. Of course my brother and Lady Zenobia Ellrington formed the nucleus round which this literary party had assembled. While they were conversing Lord Lofty entered and took his station near them. He could not actually join their party, because, though a man of considerable talent, he had never written a book, painted a picture, or moulded a statue; and it is an understood regulation of this chosen band that none but genuine authors and artists shall have the privilege of entering into their high and exclusive society. While he listened to the noble sentiment, the brilliant wit, the exhaustless knowledge, and the varied information which, clothed in the purest language and uttered in the soft subdued tones which perfect refinement dictates, formed a conversazione of such fascinating brilliancy as he had never heard before, undefined longings arose in his heart to become a more immediate partaker of the feast of reason and the flow of soul he witnessed. At this moment the Marchioness of Douro, who, seated on a low footstool at the feet of her husband and Lady Ellrington, had been gazing up at them with her large blue eyes full of wonder and delight, suddenly exclaimed in her usual artless manner: ‘I wish I had written a book!’
‘And so do I,’ was the response that immediately burst from Lofty’s lips. The marquis smiled at the characteristic simplicity of Marian’s aspiration; but he turned with a more serious air to Lofty, and said:
‘Well, and what is there to hinder you from writing as many books as you like?’
‘Nothing, my lord, except that I have not the genius.’
‘Pshaw! nonsense! you can do anything you choose!’
‘Are you in earnest, Douro?’