"Well done, La Fayette," said the prince, "I did not think that there was so much in him. To be sure, to have one's neck in danger—for the next step to deposing would probably be to hang him—might sharpen a man's wits a good deal."
"Yes," said Sir P——, "so many live by their wits in Paris, that even the marquis of the mob might have his chance; but a bon-mot actually saved, within these few days, one even so obnoxious as a bishop from being sus. per coll. In the general system of purifying the church by hanging the priests, the rabble of the Palais Royal seized the Bishop of Autun, and were proceeding to treat him 'à la lanterne' as an aristocrat. It must be owned that the lamps in Paris, swinging by ropes across the streets, offer really a very striking suggestion for giving a final lesson in politics. It was night, and the lamp was trimmed. They were already letting it down for the bishop to be its successor; when he observed, with the coolness of a spectator—'Gentlemen, if I am to take the place of that lamp, it does not strike me that the street will be better lighted.' The whimsicality of the idea caught them at once; a bishop for a reverbère was a new idea; they roared with laughter at the conception, and bid him go home for a 'bon enfant!'"
"I cannot equal the La Fayette story," said C——, "but I remember one not unlike it, when the Duke of Rutland was Irish viceroy. Charlemont was reviewing a brigade of his volunteers when he found a sudden stop in one of the movements, a troop of cavalry on a flank: choosing to exhibit a will of their own in an extraordinary way. If the brigade advanced, they halted; if it halted, they advanced. The captain bawled in vain. Aide-de-camp after aide-de-camp was sent to enquire the cause; they all came back roaring with laughter. At length Charlemont, rather irritated by the ridicule of the display, rode down the line and desired the captain to order them to move; not a man stirred; they were as immovable as a wall of brass. He then took the affair upon himself; and angrily asked, 'if they meant to insult him.' 'Not a bit of it, my lord,' cried out all the Paddies together. 'But we are not on speaking terms with the captain.'"
"How perfectly I can see Charlemont's countenance at that capital answer: his fastidious look turning into a laugh, and the real dignity of the man forced to give way to his national sense of ridicule. Is there any hope of his coming over this season, C——?" asked the prince.
"Not much. He talks in his letters of England, as a man married to a termagant might talk of his first love—hopeless regrets, inevitable destiny, and so forth. He is bound to Ireland, and she treats him as Catharine treated Petruchio before marriage. But he has not the whip of Petruchio, nor perhaps the will, since the knot has been tied. He is only one of the many elegant and accomplished Irishmen who have done just the same—who find some strange spell in the confusions of a country full of calamities; prefer clouds to sunshine, and complain of their choice all their lives."
"Yes," said W——. "It is like the attempt to put a coat and trousers on the American Indian. The hero flings them off on the first opportunity, takes to his plumes and painted skin, and prefers being tomahawked in a swamp to dying in a feather-bed like a gentleman!"
"Or," said the prince, "as Goldsmith so charmingly expresses it of the Swiss—to whom, however, it is much less applicable than his own countrymen—
'For as the babe, whom rising storms molest,
Clings but the closer to his mother's breast,
So the rude whirlwind and the tempest's roar
But bind him to his native mountains more.'"
My story next came upon the tapis; and the sketch of my capture by the free-traders was listened to with polite interest.
"Very possibly I may have some irregular neighbours," was the prince's remark. "But, it must be confessed, that I am the intruder on their domain, not they on mine; and, if I were plundered, perhaps I should have not much more right to complain, than a whale-catcher has of being swamped by a blow of the tail, or a man fond of law being forced to pay a bill of costs."