After breakfast she left us, and I was permitted to kiss his Highness’s hand, on my instalment in my new and enviable office. He did not speak much on the subject, but with his usual energy. However, I understood I was not to waste my time, as he termed it, for nothing.
When I endeavoured to argue the point (as if the whole business was not a farce,) the Prince would not hear me; so behold to all intents and purposes a hireling tutor. Faith, to confess the truth, I know not whether to be pleased or angry with this wild romance: this too, in a man whose whole life has been a laugh at romancers of every description.
What if my father learns the extent of my folly, in the first era too of my probation! Oh! what a spirit of bizarte ever drives me from the central point of common sense, and common prudence! With what tyranny does impulse rule my wayward fate! and how imperiously my heart still takes the lead of my head! yet if I could ever consider the “meteor ray” that has hitherto mis led my wanderings, as a “light from heaven,” it is now, when virtue leads me to the shrine of innocent pleasure; and the mind becomes the better for the wanderings of the heart.
“But what,” you will say, with your usual foreseeing prudence—“what is the aim, the object of your present romantic pursuit?”
Faith, none; save the simple enjoyment of present felicity, after an age of cold, morbid apathy; and a self resignation to an agreeable illusion, after having sustained the actual burthen of real sufferings (sufferings the more acute as they were self created,) succeeded by that dearth of feeling and sensation which in permitting my heart to lie fallow for an interval, only rendered it the more genial to those exotic seeds of happiness which the vagrant gale of chance has flung on its surface. But whether they will take deep root, or only wear “the perfume and suppliance of a moment,” is an unthought of “circumstance still hanging in the stars,” to whose decision I commit it.
Would you know my plans of meditated operation, they run thus:—In a few days I shall avail myself of my professional vocation, and fly home, merely to obviate suspicion in Mr. Clendinning, receive and answer letters, and get my books and wardrobe sent to the Lodge, previous to my own removal there, which I shall effect under the plausible plea of the dissipated neighbourhood of M———— house being equally inimical to the present state of my constitution and my studious pursuits; and, in fact, I must either associate with, or offend these hospitable Milesians—an alternative by no means consonant to my inclinations.
From Inismore to the Lodge, I can make constant sallies, and be in the way to receive my father, whose arrival I think I may still date at some weeks’ distance; besides, should it be necessary, I think I should find no difficulty in bribing the old steward of the Lodge to my interest. His evident aversion to Clendinning, and attachment to the Prince, renders him ripe for any scheme by which the latter could be served, or the former outwitted: and I hope in the end to effect both: for, to unite this old chieftain in bonds of amity with my father, and to punish the rascality of the worthy Mr. Clendinning, is a double “consummation devoutly to be wished.” In short, when the heart is interested in a project, the stratagems of the imagination to forward it are inexhaustible.
It should seem that the name of M———— is interdicted at Inismore: I have more than once endeavoured (though remotely) to make the residence of our family in this country a topic of conversation; but every one seemed to shrink from the subject, as though some fatality was connected with its discussion. To avoid speaking ill of those of whom we have but little reason, speak well, is the temperance of aversion, and seldom found but in great minds.
I must mention to you another instance of liberality in the sentiments of these isolated beings:—I have only once attended the celebration of divine service here since my arrival; but my absence seemed not to be observed, or my attendance noticed; and though, as an Englishman, I may be naturally supposed to be of the most popular faith, yet, for all they know to the contrary, I may be Jew, Mussulman, or Infidel; for, before me at least, religion is a topic never discussed.
Adieu,