Terrible as all this sounds, is it not less terrible than the secret executions indulged in by our own merciful laws? There at least excitement must for the time hold the victim till the supreme moment arrives, whilst here the granite walls, the grim officials, the parson mumbling prayers, divest the function of everything but strict officialism, which to the culprit must indeed be the very bitterness of death.
When the name of Count La Grange was more familiar to English ears than it is in these forty years later days, it was my delightful privilege to know—if not the redoubtable Count himself—a fair and important member of the distinguished sportsman’s family circle. I had, indeed, seen “Waterloo avenged” at Epsom in the June of 1864, when Gladiateur left the field miles behind; but it was only in the following autumn that I made the personal acquaintance of the goddess who professed a kind of allegiance to the sporting Frenchman, and re-avenged, as it were, the vengeance that had been meted out to my country the previous summer.
I was in Paris under the wing of Bob Hope-Johnstone, the terrible major, whose dislike was a thing to be avoided, and whose blow, as a certain bric-à-brac pair of Israelite brothers once discovered to their cost, was like the kick of a horse. We had dipped pretty freely into the delights of that most delightful of cities, when, sipping our coffee one evening on the terrace of the Café de la Paix, we were transfixed—at least, I was—by what appeared a heavenly being stepping out of a brougham. In those benighted days a brisk trade was done in the “Cabinets particulier” that extended over the upper floors of the historical café, and night after night the best men and the loveliest women of the Third Empire resorted thither by battalions and indulged in every delight that the best of cookery and the best of wines never failed to stimulate.
An obliging maître d’hôtel had informed me who the lady was, and possessing a reserve of assurance, since happily simmered down into a reserved and retiring disposition, I sent up my name without further ado and craved permission to pay my homage. It would be absurd and nauseous to repeat the beautiful phrases one poured into the ear of a being who, if alive now—which is doubtful—has probably not a tooth in her head; suffice to say she was a superb écarté player, and initiated me into the rudiments of the game. It seemed marvellous to me that such a goddess should strive so laboriously to overcome in me the violation of every canon of the game, but in those long-ago days I was fair of hair and of a ruddy countenance, and the coincidence may not have been so extraordinary after all. Often of an afternoon I visited her hotel in the Bois de Boulogne, and it was only when La Grange was known to be in Paris that my going in and coming out was in the least circumscribed.
Sitting at a table, with his blubber lips lingering over a glass of absinthe, was our old acquaintance, “Jellybelly,” who, noticing the late Duke of Hamilton and Claud de Crespigny within hail, bellowed out, “Will your Grace tell me the French for crab, I feel itching for one at dinner?” and on being told a species—not of the sea—shouted in his purest Franco-Houndsditch, “Garsong, apporty moir un morphion rôti.”
As the police have lately been somewhat in evidence over the commission as to whether they are as corrupt as some people consider them, an instance of over-zeal that occurred long ago will, I trust, be laid to heart in future criticisms.
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn and his boon companion, Serjeant Ballantine, once witnessed an act of unnecessary brutality towards a female in the Haymarket.
“Why this unnecessary violence, my man?” inquired the amiable Sir Alexander.
“Mind your own business, or I’ll show you,” was the reply of the zealous constable, and within a trice the female was forgotten and her two champions found themselves in Vine Street.
“Name,” inquired a priggish inspector of the Lord Chief Justice, and on being informed, he added: “No doubt—we’ve heard this kind of thing before.”