“The particular event exalted at the moment you joined us is a bachelor dinner at Blackwall to-day, for which I am trying to beat up a few recruits; let me hope you will enlist under my banner, and, with such a reinforcement, I am sure Lord Alfred will surrender at discretion.”
“All serene!” rejoined the voluble Jack; “I was ‘to let unfurnished’ (with a dinner)—and let me tell you a Blackwall feed is a special mercy that’s not to be sneezed at. Come, Alfred, my boy, merge the haughty noble in the jolly-good-fellow till further notice, and say ‘I will.’”
“Have it your own way. Since you’re both determined on my capture, it’s hopeless to resist,” said Lord Alfred, his feeble attempt at reformation completely defeated; “but I certainly had made up my mind to spend a quiet evening.”
“So had I,” returned Jack; “but then I did not expect such luck as to come in for a noisy one. What time, and where do we meet?”
“At the Pandemonium, at five o’clock,” was D’Almayne’s reply; “and mind you are both punctual.”
CHAPTER XLIII.—EATING WHITEBAIT.
Nero fiddled while Rome blazed! We possess the record of the main fact, but all details connected with that memorable performance have perished in the lapse of ages. We can imagine, however, that the novelty and horrid grandeur of the situation by no means interfered with the skill and execution of the imperial amateur; but rather added a force and brilliancy to his playing, for which it may not have been usually remarkable. If he had at all a turn for improvisation, an opportunity then offered for his making a great hit; the roaring of the flames, the crash of falling buildings, the coarse laughter of a brutal soldiery, mingling with the shrieks of women and children, and with the shouts changing to the half-curse, half-prayer, of the death agony of brave, true-hearted men, striving to rescue the helpless ones, and perishing in the exercise of their noble daring, all must have afforded a suggestive theme for the crescendo and diminuendo of the tyrant’s catgut, which may have been handed down to posterity, until the tradition may have furnished the thesis of that classic and artistic composition, the “Battle of Prague.”
Everybody considers Nero a hateful tyrant, and everybody may be in the main right; although good Dr. Goldsmith, in his interesting Roman history (which has been perpetually “abridged for the use of schools” ever since it was written, and is not half short enough yet), has probably applied too deep a coating of lamp-black even to Nero. But, though as manners and customs change, the outward seeming of things varies with them, human nature, too bad ever to be all good, and too good to be all bad, remains much the same, despite the preaching of Paul, and the watering-pot of Apollos.