Rosabella was naturally as frank as myself. In our second or third interview, she informed me that she had married at the age of thirteen, by her parents' commands, an old Frenchman whom she hated, and who might, in point of years, have been her grandfather; that her disgust and dislike towards her better half was at its height when she was accidentally thrown into the society of Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, who, in the course of due time—in one, two or three years, I forget which—had completely won her heart, and the result and pledge of their love was her only son, the young Carlo, who, having been presented in form to young George Woodcock, was no doubt remarkably communicative, seeing that he knew but little French, which language he spoke with a strong Italian accent, while George Woodcock vowed and declared he would sooner do anything than understand one word of their vile lingo.
Carlo was a prodigy of learning for his age. No expense, which could be imagined by fond parents as likely to forward or facilitate his studies, was spared or ever neglected. He had a private tutor kept for him at the college, and whom Rosabella would constantly invite to her table. All her hopes on earth were centred in her child, who slept on a bed of down and drank only of the most delicate wines. He was already a good poet, and rhymed in four different languages; but the poor child appeared to me to be actually dying a victim to severe study, combined with want of exercise. His mother indeed took him home every Saturday night, and he remained with her till the following Monday; but she made him draw plans by way of recreation, with his tutor, almost the whole of the day.
At the time we became acquainted, poor Carlo was afflicted with an oppression on the chest, attended with a cough, and Rosabella, having remarked the bright bloom on George's cheeks, snatched her poor little, interesting skeleton of a child to her heart, and half smothered him with the ardour of her kisses, and then burst into tears. I endeavoured to console her with the assurance I felt, that Carlo only required air and relaxation in order to recover his health.
"He shall have a week's holiday," said poor Rosabella, "and play with your nephew all day long, merely to try its effect."
I interpreted what she said to my nephew, who immediately seized hold of the delicate Carlo, saying, "Come along with me, little Boney. There's a castor for you," taking up the child's large cocked hat, which was full half as big as himself, and, pressing it down on his head by main force, "one may see you're a Boney in a minute. Never mind. I won't be such a coward as to leather you till you get stronger, for fear I should kill you; so come with me my little fellow, and I will teach you to swim and play at cricket."
"Plait-t'il?" said Carlo, raising his large languid eyes to George's face from the pencil he was cutting.
"Veux-tu jouer avec le petit Anglais, mon enfant?" inquired Rosabella.
"Volontiers," answered Carlo, throwing aside his pencil and gracefully bowing to George, as he took off the huge military cocked hat, which George had fastened tight on his head by dint of hard thumps on the top of it with his fist.
"Come along," said George, dragging Carlo forward to the spacious courtyard below.
The contrast which these two children of exactly the same age exhibited, both in their characters and persons, was too striking to have been overlooked, even by the most careless observer: for my part, it furnished me with no inconsiderable source of amusement.