It was obvious from his manner, and his frequent return to the topic, that that charge of deserting his party had deeply wounded his generous and sensitive nature; and nothing struck me as more characteristic of his mind, than the variety and richness of his fine amplification on this subject.
“In those ranks,” said he, “I fought for nearly the half of that portion of life allotted to man; certainly for that portion of my course, in which the desires, the vigour, and the applicability of all the best parts of human nature have their fullest play. I came to it a volunteer—I fought side by side with its foremost—I shared the ‘winter of their discontent,’ as willingly as the summer of their prosperity. I took the buffets of ill fortune, and they were many, with as cheerful a countenance and as unshaken a fidelity as any man. But when I saw a new banner raised among them, blazoned with mottoes of evil, and refused to follow, who were the deserters? They or I?” As he spoke these words, he drew his otherwise rather stooping form to its full height, lifted his hand above his head, and stood like one at once demanding and defying the investigation of the empire.
The roar of applause which followed seemed to shake the very walls. He was powerfully moved; his countenance changed from its usual pallidness to strong suffusion; his hands rather tossed than waved in the air. At last I saw one of them thrust strongly into his bosom, as if the gesture was excited by some powerful recollection. “Do I speak without proof of the public hazards?” he exclaimed. “I can give you demonstration—I need invoke neither powers above nor powers below to enlighten you. I have the oracle within my hand.” The House fixed all its eyes upon him. He dropped his voice, and spoke with a faint, but clear tone which formed a remarkable contrast to his usually bold, and even harsh enunciation: “Sir,” said he, in this half-whispered voice, “before I join these gentlemen in their worship, I must know what deity presides in their temple; I must see that the incense which fumes before its altar is taken from the sacred repositories of the constitution, not the smuggled importation of foreign fabrications of revolt—that pernicious compound of civil mischief and mad metaphysics—which, instead of consummating and purifying the sacrifice, only poisons the air. I must see something of the priest too, before I join in his aspirations; I must see that he is lawfully inducted to his office, that he is not a rebel in the garb of loyalty—a blasphemer where he professes to pray, and a traitor where he propounds allegiance.”
Fox here, evidently taking the description to himself, exhibited palpable signs of displeasure. Burke caught the expression at once, and instantly changed the whole current of his conceptions. “If,” said he, “the honourable gentleman thinks that I designate him as the high-priest of this new worship, he does me as much injustice as himself. No, no! When we shall see the Republican Pantheon thrown open, he, and such as he, will not be called to officiate at the altar. He is much more likely to be the victim. The popular ornaments, now flung so lavishly upon him, will find him no further favour, than the speedier offering on the same abhorred altar, which reeks with so much of the best blood of France.” Here a corpulent noble, peculiarly hostile to Burke, laughed contemptuously. The orator instantly turned upon him. “True,” said he, “there may be a good deal of variety in that procession. There may be the mummer as well as the priest; it may have the mountebank selling his potions, and playing his tricks, as well as the sacrificer with his axe—unless the ambition of the bloated performer should prefer to combine the offices, and be at once the butcher and the buffoon.”
The hit was felt on all sides, and the laughter was unbounded. He then rose, as was his custom, into a higher strain. “I can imagine that procession,” said he, “or rather, that triumph, of the principles of change. Like the return of the classical Bacchus from his Indian conquests, the demigod,” and he now cast a look at Fox, “secure of supremacy, exulting in his prowess, and thinking the civilized world at his feet; but not without the companionship of his trusty Silenus”—and here he turned his glance on the noble lord—“that veteran follower, whose ambition is limited to his cups, and the vigour of whose fidelity is shown only in the constancy of his intoxication; the whole procession being drawn by the wild lords of the forest and the wilderness, who, harnessed as they may be for the moment, will no sooner find their food stinted, than they will resume the natural instincts of the lion and the tiger, turn on their drivers and devour them.
“But, sir,” he exclaimed, turning to the chair, “I have higher topics, and to those I now call the attention of the representatives of England. I have alluded to the revolutionary temple. I here have its deity.” With these words, he plucked from his bosom a large dagger, held it for a moment up to the light, and then flung it at the foot of the table. The astonishment, and even the alarm, of the whole assembly was beyond description. They all started from their seats, as if assassination had stood before them in a visible shape. Some crowded round Burke, some seized the dagger, which was eventually carried to the Speaker, and became the object of universal curiosity. All was confusion for a considerable time. At length Burke, in a few words delivered in his most impressive tone, explained the phenomenon. “That dagger,” said he, “is one of thousands, perhaps of millions, which the preachers of philosophy are now forging for popular conviction. You see that by its construction it is equally fitted for the head of a pike, or for a dagger—equally serviceable in tearing down the monarchy in the field, or stabbing its friends in their chambers. You have it, at once the emblem of rebellion and assassination. Those are the arguments of the new school—those are the instruments by which the limbs of the state are to be amputated, for replacement by the inventions of the revolutionary mechanists. Those are the keys by which the locks of cabinets and councils are henceforth to be opened, and the secrets of national wealth laid bare to the rapacity of the rabble.” After this speech nothing was listened to.
The debate had been prolonged through the greater part of the night, and yet such was the interest felt in its subject, that the streets in the neighbourhood continued crowded to the last. All the hotels and coffee-houses were filled with people waiting for the division. Groups, with lighted torches, were lingering everywhere, and passing the intelligence along, as a member happened casually to make his appearance in the course of the night; shouts and expressions of wrath alternately arose, according to the nature of the intelligence, and a species of open-air legislature was held during one of the bitterest nights of winter, with discussions as active, though perhaps not altogether so classical, as those within; yet totally free from tumult, and in the spirit of a people who live with a constant reference to the laws. The rush of the members to the porch, on the breaking up of the debate, produced a corresponding rush of the multitude. Public curiosity was roused to its wildest height—every public sentiment had its full expression; and whether the acclamation was louder when Fox’s corpulent frame was seen toiling its slow way through the pressure, or when Pitt’s slender figure and passionless face was recognised, is a question which might have perplexed the keenest investigators of popular sentiment. All was that uproar in which the Englishman delights as a portion of his freedom.
On returning to my chamber, exhausted, yet animated with a new sense of the value of existence in such a country, and of the noble faculties which she carried in her bosom, I saw a large packet on my table. I gazed on its envelope for a few moments with that strange emotion which sometimes makes us dread to open the very letter which we most desire to receive. It was obviously from Downing Street. At last I opened it. It contained my commission in the Guards!
My destiny was now fixed, and it is impossible to tell how much I felt relieved. I had spent the preceding period in such perplexing indecision, that I felt my heart withering within me. Now all was clear. My course was decided. I was in other hands than my own, and whatever might be the result, I was no longer answerable for either good or ill fortune. No human being who has not felt the trial almost the torment, of being left to decide on the conduct which may make or mar him for life, can conceive the depression into which it plunges the mind. From this I was now relieved; I was wholly free; an established routine, a vigorous profession, a regulated pursuit, and that pursuit one of the most honourable nature, was suddenly prepared for me by the enclosure upon my table. After again and again reading this simple but expressive document, I threw myself on my bed, and attempted to forget it and the world. But I could forget neither; my eyelids would not close; sleep had gone from me. After a useless effort for composure, I rose, relighted my lamp, and spent the rest of the night in writing to my relatives, to Vincent, to Mordecai, and every one to whom I felt his majesty’s sign-manual a vindication of my whole career. There was still one cloud that overhung my prospect, one gloomy and bitter remembrance: but this cloud I had neither the power nor even the wish to dispel; this remembrance was already a part of my being—to extinguish it was impossible. I resolved to cherish it as a sacred recollection, to combine it with the aspirations of my new pursuit, and render them thus still nobler; to reserve it as a treasure inaccessible to the knowledge of mankind, but to which I might return in my hours of discontent with the world, and restore my sense of the beauty of mind and form which might still exist in the shape of human nature.
Yet it may be justly supposed that I did not limit my feelings to this lonely abstraction. I spent an anxious period in making enquiries for the Maréchale, in every quarter which offered the slightest probability of discovering her abode. Though I had seen the announcement of Clotilde’s approaching marriage in the public journals, I had seen no mention of its having taken place. My search was wholly unproductive. The captivating duchess, who received me with the kindness which seemed a part of her nature, while she joined me in my praises of the “young, the lovely, and the accomplished Comtesse,” “her dearest of friends,” could tell me nothing more than that she had left London, and she believed with an intention of visiting France. There her knowledge ceased. I learned only further, that she had grown singularly fond of solitude, was melancholy, and had no hesitation in expressing the deepest dislike to the marriage proposed by her family. My enquiry was at an end.