"My life belongs to my country and must not be lightly risked in trifles!"
On this, one of his aides-de-camp, the Scottish Earl of Hopetoun, whom he had always mentioned with honour in his despatches, accepted the challenge in his place, and leaving Scotland, without bidding adieu to his Countess, Louisa Wedderburn, or their eleven children, repaired straight to Paris, and met young Ney on the Bois de Boulogne, where they fired at once. The story adds, that Hopetoun fell pierced by a ball in the head, in the very place where he had been wounded during the famous sortie from Bayonne in February, 1814, and that as he fell, young Ney flung his pistol in the air, exclaiming—
"Sacré Dieu! the Prince of Moskwa is revenged!"*
* Unfortunately for this story (which contains some strange grains of truth, and which was told me by the Lieutenant of Marshal St. Arnaud's Spain troop in the Crimea) the gallant Earl of Hopetoun died in his bed, from natural causes, at Paris, on the 27th August, 1823.
CHAPTER XI.
QUENTIN DEPARTS.
"Would ye my death? Can that avail you?
Or life? what life will ye to give?
For this existence, grief-embittered,
Doth hourly die, yet dying live.
My sorrows, if ye fain would slay me,
Your blows so fierce, so fast to deal,
It needs not: one the least, the lightest,
Would task endurance strong as steel."
Portuguese of Rodriguez Lobo.
On the same evening when Quentin received the despatch from the adjutant, with instructions to start forthwith by the nearest road that led towards the frontier, Monkton was preparing to give a little supper in his billet, and was superintending the cooking thereof in person.
The house he occupied had belonged to some titulado of Portugese Estremadura. The ceilings were lofty, and the cornices of the heavy and florid Palladian style were elaborately gilded, and everywhere the green fleur-de-lis of St. Avis (an order founded by Alphonso, for defence against the Moors, from whom he took Santarem and Lisbon) was reproduced among the decorations.
The floors were of polished oak; the furniture, in many instances richly gilded, was all of crimson velvet stuffed with down, and the cabinets of ebony were covered with carvings, some representing the past discoveries, victories, and glories, real or imaginary, of the kings of Portugal. Many fine paintings bore marks of additions received from the French in the shape of bayonet stabs and bullet holes, with finishing touches in burnt cork, by which Venuses and Madonnas were liberally supplied with moustachios and so forth; while the frescoes bore such lovely delineations of fair-skinned, golden-haired, and ripe-lipped goddesses and nymphs, that, as Monkton said, "they made one long for pagan times again." Over a Venus being attired in scanty garments by some completely nude graces, was the motto "Si non caste tantum modo caute."