Mingy understood him completely, repeated his promise, with a full determination of keeping it for fear of worse consequences, and received the pedlar's address--No. 43, Compton Street, Seven Dials.
"Now, mind," said the pedlar, as the worthy "fence" took up his hat to depart, "you're not to say a word to Sam of anything that has happened till I see you to-morrow. Perhaps I may then allow you to tell him what a fool he is making of himself; perhaps I may let him go on and trap himself."
Mingy Bowes was all obedience; for the confident tone of the Italian servant had greatly shaken his reliance on his friend Sam's conclusions, and his own somewhat perilous position had rendered him wonderfully ductile. A good deal chapfallen, he took a very polite leave of his two companions, and left them alone to discuss the scene which had just passed. The first observation came from the lips of Signor Carlo Carlini, who exclaimed, in an indignant tone--
"What a set of blackguards you have in this country of England! My countrymen are bad enough, and so are the Spaniards; but it seems to me brave and honourable to attack a carriage, perhaps escorted by a dozen or two of dragoons, when compared with this attempt to rob a man of his money by accusing him of a crime. A bandit is a gentleman to such a fellow as that."
"There are a great number of such, I am afraid," replied the pedlar. "These things are happening every day in London; and I have known two or three cases in which a gentleman in the same situation as yourself has made a great deal of money, and set up a hotel, upon the strength of some letters which he had found belonging to his master. You cannot form a notion of all that is going on every day in this great city; but wherever you get a great number of men together, you are sure to gather a great quantity of rascality. But, as to this business, we must talk to the colonel, and see what he thinks it better for us to do. So, with your leave, I will stop till he comes back, and should like in the mean time to hear the rest of the story you were telling me."
"With all my heart," replied Carlini. "Let me see where I was. Oh--I remember I was just telling you how G----, the life-guardsman, rose to be a prince and a grandee of Spain."
CARLINI'S STORY, CONTINUED.
"Spain is a very curious country, sir--a very curious country indeed. Things happen there every day that could happen in no other spot of the globe. It is like one of those things which I think you call magic lanterns, where the scenes are always shifting, and nothing on earth remains steady for an hour. You may see a little ragged boy running in the street, and not long after he'll be walking about the court; a great man in velvet and lace, without anybody but himself knowing how it happened. There are only four things necessary to it--impudence, cleverness, youth, and good luck. Well, as I was saying, G----, the life-guardsman, in a very few months rose from nothing at all to be a prince and a minister. The old nobility grumbled and growled, and all the new people tried to stop his progress, till they found it was useless; but in the end the old and the new, both together, bowed down and licked his feet. All this time, as I have said, I heard nothing of him; and I thought he had quite forgotten me, and was just as selfish and cold-hearted as such sort of people generally are. But I made a mistake, sir, and think it but right to do justice to a man against whom everybody cries out. One day, as I was walking along the street in which his palace was situated--for he lived in a palace by this time--I saw a fine horse standing before the little door (there was a great door, where the carriages went in), and three or four servants, all magnificently dressed, by the side of it. Just as I was going to pass, who should come out but the prince himself, in a general's uniform, all gold, and feathers, and jingling spurs! I drew back, with my brass basin under my arm, to let him go by, thinking he would take no notice of me. His eye fell upon me, however; and he knew me directly and stopped. 'Ah, Carlini!' he said, 'is that you? Why, you have never been to see me. I haven't forgotten you, and if I can do anything to serve you, I will. Come to me here to-morrow at ten o'clock;' and then he told the servants to let me be admitted. There are some people who, as the French say, suffer fortune to knock at their door and do not open, but I am not one of that kind; and putting on the best clothes I had, I left my brass basin and my razors behind me, and went away the next morning to see the prince. I suppose there were at least twenty people in his ante-room, waiting to see him, and amongst them a great number of noblemen and high officers; but I went through them all, after a page, and was shown straight in. I could hear some of them say to their neighbours, 'Why, that's Carlini, the barber! We shall not see the prince for an hour, if he's only just going to be shaved;' but I laughed in my sleeve and went on. I found the great man stretched at his ease, in a dressing-gown of gold brocade, and I stood near the door, bowing down to the ground; but he said, 'Come near, Carlini--come near and sit down;' and he began to talk to me just as familiarly as ever. He even spoke about the silk stockings, and said, 'Ay, those silk stockings made my fortune, and I won't be ungrateful to them or you.' He then went on to speak of a great number of other things, and joked and laughed with me till I believe the people in the ante-room thought I was telling him all the scandal of the court, as barbers often will do; but at last he began to be more serious, and questioned me about what knowledge I possessed. He had not much himself, so that I don't wonder he was surprised to find that I could read and write, speak several languages, and keep accounts as well as any contador. At length he dismissed me, saying, 'I won't forget you, Carlini--I won't forget you; and if ever you think have done so, come back at this hour, and they will let you in.' But I had no occasion; for three days had scarcely passed when he sent for me, and told me that the king had graciously permitted him to name the viceroy of the Indies, and that he had appointed a certain nobleman (whose chin, I was very glad to find, had never come under my razor), upon the condition that he gave him the nomination of his intendente--that is to say, a sort of steward. 'Now, Carlini,' he said, 'if this suits you, you shall have the place;' and he told me how much it was worth--besides pickings. 'You had better take it,' he said, 'if you don't mind going to Lima; for it is the best thing I can offer you, and heaven knows how long I may be here to offer you anything. Fortune is fickle, and as she raised me up, so she may cast me down; but if you take this, you at all events open for yourself a new path in life, which may perhaps lead to greatness and wealth.'
"I was very much inclined to cast myself at his feet and give him honours more than his due; but you need not ask me whether I accepted the proposal, which placed me in a position that I had never even dreamed of obtaining. I was introduced to the newly-created viceroy, gave him apparently the fullest satisfaction, and set out with him tor Lima, applying myself heartily to learn, before I reached the shores of the New World, the business which I was likely to be called upon to transact. By close attention I made such great progress, that my new patron, although at first somewhat cold towards me, who had been forced into his service, became attached to me, and relied upon me entirely. During two years I transacted the whole business of his household, amassed great wealth, and as the business of my actual office was as small as the emoluments were great, I had plenty of time both to push my fortune and to enjoy my leisure. The intendente of the viceroy was a very great man. His favour and his influence were sought for by all classes of people. A great portion of the wealth of the province passed through his hands; and, enlarging my views with my opportunities, I established a bank in Lima, rendered a large house in Mexico a mere branch of my establishment, and, passing from the one city to the other whenever the business of my intendencia permitted, became one of the greatest dealers in the precious metals to be found in all the colonies. But I had fallen upon those changeful times which left none of the world's goods firm and stable. Revolutionary ideas began to get abroad; and, with a miscalculation very common in those who have been born and acted under one period while passing to another, I thought the things which I had been accustomed to retained sufficient vitality to last, even though the germs of a new order of events were destroying their roots and pushing through the ground. At all events, gratitude towards the viceroy, who had been most kind and generous towards me, would have induced me to pursue the same course which I did follow, even if I had known that circumstances were against him. His friends would have been my friends; his supporters, those to whom I granted support. I was in the world of wealth; the power of wealth was greater than the power of authority; and as, by his generous carelessness, the wealth was at my command while the authority was at his, I might be said to be more powerful in the Indies than himself. I call heaven to witness that I did not use this great power amiss. Undoubtedly, I supported the existing state of things. By it I had risen; on it my fortunes were founded; and no one had a right to attribute to me as a crime gratitude to those who had befriended me, and the support of institutions under which I lived and prospered. But then came the revolution: the colonies took advantage of the weakness of the mother country--a weakness which their establishment had first caused, and which their support had nurtured. They cast off the yoke; they forgot all former benefits; I became loaded with odium; my bank was pillaged; my property was sequestrated; my house was sacked; and I was cast into one of the dungeons of the old inquisition, where I remained for nine months, in a state of horrible neglect and privation, which it is impossible to describe. My food was scanty, the attendance I received grudging and unwilling. I had no bed, no accommodation of any kind. The mud, in some parts of the horrible cell to which I was consigned, was several inches deep, and the straw upon which I slept was at the bottom soaked in water. I went into that dreary abode a healthy and powerful man, in the early prime of life; I came out a skeleton, hardly able to drag my feeble limbs along. By this time some degree of order was restored, and a show of law was established. It was necessary to try me, as I had been so long confined; and idle charges were fabricated to justify my long detention and the pillage of my property. Not even the skill and the malice of those who seek to justify wrong could devise an accusation that was tenable. My accounts were all in order; and, although no person had a right to investigate them but the viceroy, whom they had expelled, they could not even found a charge upon them. As a base excuse, however, for refusing to do me justice, they declared that I had systematically denied all assistance to the leaders of the revolution, in my capacity as a banker; and, after having been one of the most wealthy men of the land, I was cast upon the world utterly penniless. There are some men, however, who act by divine laws and not by human ones. I am afraid that they are to be found only in the lower portion of the middle class. There are none more cruelly tyrannical than the people; none more selfishly careless than the upper class. The latter are the best masters, because in their carelessness they are generous while they have the means. The former are the worst, because their minds have never been expanded by prosperity, and because their passions are capricious in proportion to their numbers. But in the middle class you find the men who have lived by right and equity, and are sensible of the benefits of right and equity: nay, more--who will follow them sometimes even when they don't see good consequences to themselves. I wandered through Lima, without a friend as I thought, and certainly without a penny; but passing by the door of a goldsmith, to whom I had once lent money, he called me in and made his house my home. He and I consulted with regard to my affairs. Most of those to whom I had lent large sums had fled; others had joined the revolutionary party and were beyond my reach; but there were a few who owed me trifling debts, of thirty or forty crowns, which I had no power of reclaiming, for all my papers were in the hands of the state; but nine out of ten of those who could do so paid me, and I gained sufficient money to come to Europe and to subsist for a few months. It was necessary that I should adopt some new trade. I landed in France, went to Paris, offered myself as a servant, and became courier to an English gentleman. I travelled with him for two years, made myself thoroughly acquainted with his language, of which I had learned a good deal before in Naples, and at last lost him, for he was drowned on a party of pleasure, passing from St. Malo to Jersey. I then became courier to a German count, but I only remained in his service for three months; and at the end of that time, after gambling unsuccessfully, he left me to provide for myself. I now found that I was better fitted for a barber than for a courier, and was thinking of resuming my old profession, when the place of waiter at an inn was offered to me at Bordeaux. There I happened to meet with my present master. He did not recollect me in the least, but he was kind and courteous to everybody; and, as the landlord endeavoured to cheat him enormously, one day, in a fit of spleen or indignation, call it what you will, I warned him of the fact, and was dismissed for my pains by the good master of the house. Some days after, I met his excellency in the streets. He remembered me as the waiter, though not as the banker, asked my circumstances, and on my telling him the whole story of my dismissal, engaged me as his servant. With him I have remained ever since; and, as I told you before, a better master does not live. I have been with him in a good number of different countries; and I know quite well that if I act faithfully to him I shall always find him act generously towards me. I am too old to push my fortunes as I did when I was young; and circumstanced as I am, I find--although in life I have very often seen the contrary--that for me, at least, according to your English maxim, honesty is the best policy."
"I have always found it so," replied the pedlar; "but yet one sees people get on wonderfully by the other course. Now, this very man who was here just now is as great a rogue as any in the world, and yet he has risen from a shoeblack, and made a good deal of money, I am told, by pure lying and rascality. I wonder if that story he told about his visits to Lady What-d'ye-call-her is true or false."