[CHAPTER XXXVII]
The next day, Henry Brougham, M.P., engaged me to dine with him at Verié's in the Palais Royal. He had invited Nugent and Luttrell to join us, but not Amy. The shrewd observations which Brougham made during dinner, on all he had heard and seen in the morning, having passed several hours of it listening to the debates, dans la Chambre des Pairs, not only amused, they astonished me. I never yet came in contact with such a memory as Brougham's in my life. It was not like Worcester's, gaping wide open, to receive and retain all the trash that might assail his ears. Brougham caught the substance and pith of what he heard with peculiar tact, while the prose and folly appeared to have flitted across his memory but an instant, and then passed away like chaff, leaving only real matter behind.
After dinner, we went to witness Talma's performance in one of Racine's tragedies, Brougham being a very great admirer of French dramatic poetry. Before we parted, Brougham promised to present me to a very interesting new acquaintance of his, in the shape of a very fine, noble-looking, elderly man, whose name I have forgotten. He was a peer of France, and certainly one of the best bred and most imposingly respectable men I ever had the good fortune to meet with. He did Brougham and me the honour to accompany us to the Théâtre François, and I saw him depart with feelings of real regret, being well aware that I was not likely to fall into his society again.
Brougham I saw very frequently, and I one day took the liberty of consulting him on the subject of my annuity from the Duke of Beaufort, which His Grace refused to pay me, owing to my having been induced to write a few lines to Lord Worcester, contrary to the letter of the bond.
Brougham said boldly, and at a public dinner-table, that it was a mean, paltry transaction, the object of the duke being fully obtained by my final separation from his son, to seize hold of such a pretext for depriving me of a bare existence. He advised me to bring the cause to trial by all means; had no doubt of its success; afterwards wrote to me from England to the same effect, and I showed his letter to young Montagu, who was a friend of the Duchess of Beaufort, and often on a visit to her at Badminton. This gay young man was, however, now passing a few weeks at Paris.
Before Brougham went to England he very kindly promised to give me every assistance in his power, provided I would take the advice he so strongly recommended, of proceeding against his Grace of Beaufort.
"In the first place," said Brougham, "Lord Worcester could not in common decency, even supposing it were possible that he wished it—and I will not for an instant imagine that possible, or in human nature—but even if he wished to bring your letter, written under such circumstances, in evidence against you, shame must hold him back."
Everybody agreed with Brougham. Even his friend Montagu said that, of course, Lord Worcester would not think of turning witness against me in a court of justice. That he said was quite out of the question; but he understood that his evidence on oath would not be required to prove that I had forfeited the bond.