‘The Viscount,’ he said.
‘Damnation! Have I the man’s clothes on me, too?’ cried I.
But Rowley hastened to reassure me. On the first word of my coming, the Count had put the matter of my wardrobe in the hands of his own and my cousin’s tailors; and on the rumour of our resemblance, my clothes had been made to Alain’s measure.
‘But they were all made for you express, Mr. Anne. You may be certain the Count would never do nothing by ’alf: fires kep’ burning; the finest of clothes ordered, I’m sure, and a body-servant being trained a-purpose.’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘it’s a good fire, and a good set-out of clothes; and what a valet, Mr. Rowley! And there’s one thing to be said for my cousin—I mean for Mr. Powl’s Viscount—he has a very fair figure.’
‘Oh, don’t you be took in, Mr. Anne,’ quoth the faithless Rowley: ‘he has to be hyked into a pair of stays to get them things on!’
‘Come, come, Mr. Rowley,’ said I, ‘this is telling tales out of school! Do not you be deceived. The greatest men of antiquity, including Caesar and Hannibal and Pope Joan, may have been very glad, at my time of life or Alain’s, to follow his example. ’Tis a misfortune common to all; and really,’ said I, bowing to myself before the mirror like one who should dance the minuet, ‘when the result is so successful as this, who would do anything but applaud?’
My toilet concluded, I marched on to fresh surprises. My chamber, my new valet and my new clothes had been beyond hope: the dinner, the soup, the whole bill of fare was a revelation of the powers there are in man. I had not supposed it lay in the genius of any cook to create, out of common beef and mutton, things so different and dainty. The wine was of a piece, the doctor a most agreeable companion; nor could I help reflecting on the prospect that all this wealth, comfort and handsome profusion might still very possibly become mine. Here were a change indeed, from the common soldier and the camp kettle, the prisoner and his prison rations, the fugitive and the horrors of the covered cart!
CHAPTER XVII—THE DESPATCH-BOX
The doctor had scarce finished his meal before he hastened with an apology to attend upon his patient; and almost immediately after I was myself summoned and ushered up the great staircase and along interminable corridors to the bedside of my great-uncle the Count. You are to think that up to the present moment I had not set eyes on this formidable personage, only on the evidences of his wealth and kindness. You are to think besides that I had heard him miscalled and abused from my earliest childhood up. The first of the émigrés could never expect a good word in the society in which my father moved. Even yet the reports I received were of a doubtful nature; even Romaine had drawn of him no very amiable portrait; and as I was ushered into the room, it was a critical eye that I cast on my great-uncle. He lay propped on pillows in a little cot no greater than a camp-bed, not visibly breathing. He was about eighty years of age, and looked it; not that his face was much lined, but all the blood and colour seemed to have faded from his body, and even his eyes, which last he kept usually closed as though the light distressed him. There was an unspeakable degree of slyness in his expression, which kept me ill at ease; he seemed to lie there with his arms folded, like a spider waiting for prey. His speech was very deliberate and courteous, but scarce louder than a sigh.