In accordance with the custom of the house, the morning journals now appeared; and here the fancy of Roseton had therein a living and distinctive character over each. Youths, of perfect beauty, who had, during the three previous hours, diligently studied the sheets in question, passed before him, one by one, dressed in appropriate costume, and each one delivered to him in mental short-hand the entire contents of the journal which he represented. These were rendered wholly in the Sanscrit tongue, in which Roseton was an adept; with the exception of the Tribune, the language of which, Roseton was accustomed to say, is unique, and incapable of translation. First appeared the representative of the Herald, dressed as a jockey; an irresistible air of assurance accompanied him, and he threw frequent summersaults with inconceivable quickness. Next marched the Tribune;—a youth shrouded in inexplicable garments, and the living centre of a whirlwind of exploding theories. Then stepped the Times in rapid succession; a blooming boy dressed with precision, and delicately balancing himself as he delivered his part. Next appeared the World, habited as a theological student, and sorrow for irreparable loss was indicated by a Weed upon his hat. One looked for the embodiment of the News in vain, but a Wooden figure, wheeled in silence through the apartment, was thought to convey a mysterious lesson. A martial ghost, wearing upon his head a triple crown, like the vision of Macbeth, yet bravely supporting himself under the three-fold encumbrance, seemed the Courier of Wall Street. The pageant passed, but Roseton seemed unsatisfied; and it soon occurred to him that the deep draughts of secession news, which he had been accustomed to receive each morning from the Journal of Commerce, had, on this occasion, failed him. But on further reflection his infallible logic convinced him that the existence of this paper must have ceased at the same time with that of the Southern mails.
It now remained to perform the morning toilet; and a corps of attendants conveyed Roseton to his dressing-room. Here the lavish wealth of the Pont-Noirs found another appropriate field for its display. The floor was of Carrera marble, curiously tesselated, rising in the centre to the support of a fountain, where water-nymphs breathed forth shattered columns of fragrant spray, whose parabolic curves filled a spacious lake below. [pg 213] Vases of diamond, emerald and ruby crowded the mantles, each filled with some unknown perfume—the result of Roseton's miraculous chemistry; for in this science Roseton was supreme. In a single day he exhausted the resources of American laboratories, and a short visit to Europe convinced him that henceforth he must be his own instructor. Savants in vain solicited his formulas. 'Why,' he reasoned, 'should I furnish children in science with tools of which they can not comprehend the use?' Delicate tables, chiseled from the humbler gems, were scattered about the chamber; agate, topaz, lapis-lazuli, amethyst, and a smaragdus of miraculous beauty. Chairs of golden wire completed the furniture of this unequaled apartment.
The hangings of the walls were a freak at once of genius and lavishness. They consisted of the bills of the Valley Bank, extravagantly lapped, and of untold denomination. But the ceiling—how shall I describe it? Did you, indeed, look up inimitably into a Hesperian sky, or was this firmament the creation of the painter's art? Nothing flecked the profound, unsearchable, impassive blue. There brooded the primeval heavens, undimmed by earthly vapors, unfathomed by earthly instruments; forever indescribable by earthly tongues.
Two hundred years before, a Pont-Noir of the Roseton branch accumulated immense wealth from a diamond mine in East Haddam, Connecticut. He was a man of deep and ardent imagination, and uncomprehended by the simple villagers, who irreverently styled him the 'mad Roseton.' He died, and left a singular will. It provided that his estates, money, and jewels, should be realized and invested on interest for the space of two hundred years, by a committee of trustees, consisting of the governors of the six New England States, to be assisted by the fiscal board of Mississippi, whenever such a State should be organized. At the expiration of that time, the avails were to be paid to Roseton, of Pont-Noir, provided but one of that name should exist; if more were living, the estate was to remain in abeyance until such a condition should be reached. Not undiscerningly had he foreseen the probability that his will would be disputed, and a short time before his death he caused a formal attestation of his sanity to be made by the entire body of clergymen comprising the Middlesex Conference. His mode of proof was simple, consisting only of an original manuscript, refuting the Arminian heresy; but it sufficed, and the will was obeyed. Not unwisely, also, had he calculated upon the energies of population; for, during one hundred and fifty years, the Pont-Noirs spread over both continents. Then they paused, and but two of the race—chosen by lot—were allowed to marry. At the expiration of twenty-five years, a single male of the race, also chosen by lot, married, and became the father of the present Roseton. On the day that Roseton was twenty-four years old, his father summoned him to his apartment. 'To-morrow,' said he, 'the mystical two hundred years expire, and an estate of inconceivable magnitude will vest in the single Roseton—if there be but one. My son, my life is of less consequence than yours, since it is farther spent; but it still has sweetness, and it is the only life that I possess. Here are three goblets of wine—one is Scuppernong, the other two are harmless. I will apportion our chances fairly, and will drink two; you shall drink one. The lawyers are at hand to arrange the inquest, and to confer the title-deeds to the estate.' In silence the son consented, and the devoted pair drank off the goblets as proposed, and at once sat down to a banquet prepared for them, and for the legal gentlemen attendant. When the ices came in, the elder Roseton was carried out; and the heir of Pont-Noir, having seen the remains properly bestowed in a place of safety, and a special inquest held, finished the night with the counsellors in the enjoyment of a tempered hilarity, and rose next morning the possessor of wealth so boundless, so unspeakable, that [pg 214] my brain reels as I endeavor to grasp at even its outlying fragments.
In the hope of presenting some of its details to the reader, I procured, at an enormous expense, a Babbage calculating engine, and during three successive weeks worked it without pause upon the illimitable figures. It then became clogged, and the village Vulcan, whose impartial hand corrects at once the time-pieces and the plowshares of the neighborhood, having knocked the machinery to pieces with a sledge, declared himself incompetent to explain and unable to repair. My results therefore are maimed and imperfect, but I trust they will show that I have not exaggerated the difficulty of the process of reduction and estimation.
The fragmentary portions of the estate, then, are: the entire capital stock of thirty-eight of the Banks of New York city (though here a wise policy has suggested the employment of various respectable names as those of shareholders, in order to protect these institutions from the fury of a mob); all that portion of the metropolis lying between the Twelfth and Twenty-second Avenues, from Canal Street to the suburb of Poughkeepsie, comprising of necessity the water rights and quarries; eighteen thousand millions of bullion specially deposited in the State Bank of Mississippi, to the order of the six New England Governors, trustees; the Pont-Noir mansion on Nultiel Street, surrounded by twenty-five acres of land, the very heart of the best New York residences, and variously estimated from six to eight millions of dollars; the remote but tolerably well known villages of Boston and Philadelphia in their entirety; and one undivided tenth of the stock of the Valley Bank. It was upon the last investment that Roseton chiefly drew for his expenses. 'My fancy,' said he, 'inclines me to convert Boston into an observatory, and Philadelphia into a tea-garden, and nothing but an amiable regard for the comfort of a handful of families prevents at once from carrying such plans into effect. My mansion is of necessity unproductive; and the Mississippi bullion is greatly needed where it already is. City property is a dreadful nuisance, the taxes are outrageous and the tenants pay poorly; and although the New York Banks announce dividends, yet when you come to look at their actual condition, hum, hum;—is that door shut?—just put your ear a little this way, so; there, I say nothing; there are Banks and Banks; but a building may have two doors, and what goes out at one may come in again at the other, eh? Mind, I say nothing. So you see, beside the East Haddam diamond mines, which are at present badly worked; and a few South American republics which are chiefly occupied in assassinating their presidents; and a border State or two that usually leave me to provide for their half-yearly coupons;—besides these resources, you see, I have really little else to look to but the Valley Bank.'
While the possessor of this wealth is undergoing his morning toilet, let us attend the steps of his butler in chief, whose duty it was to prepare the eleven-o'clocker with which Roseton was accustomed to fortify himself against the fatigues of the middle part of the day. Passing down a succession of flights of stairs, each one consisting of two hundred and twenty-five steps of the finest ebony, we at last find ourselves in an immense cavern, dimly lighted by the internal fires of the earth, which are here approached and verified. It was, however, left for Roseton to discover that these flames consisted of negative qualities as to caloric; and a project for cooling the streets of Newport by night, in summer, by means of floods of brilliant radiance, every point of which shall surpass the calcium light of the Museum, will soon evince to society that Roseton has not lived in vain. It was indeed a place of rarest temperature, and a sublime sense of personal exaltation thrilled you as you entered. The butler approached an arch, and unlocking a wicker door which was ingeniously contrived to admit air, but to exclude the furtive or the inquisitive hand, threw open to [pg 215] your inspection the immense wine-cellar within.
Such indeed were the dimensions of the crypt that some little time might elapse before your eye could fully gauge them: but on accustoming yourself to the enlarged mensuration occasioned by the unearthly light, you saw that the cavity in question could not be less than six feet high at the top of the arch, three feet wide, and at least forty-eight inches deep. It was musty, cobwebbed, and encrusted with stalactic nitre, but the spirit of rare old vintages exhaled from its depths, and visionary clusters of purplest grapes dangled in every direction. And first your eye lighted upon a half dozen real old India Port, picked up by golden chance at an assignee's sale in Rivington Street. The chalk-mark on the bottles was intended to be cabalistically private, but an acquaintance with the occult dialect of Spanish Zingari convinced you that 1/2, meant nothing else than that the bottles represented twelve and a half cents each, with three years interest,—a fabulous sum, but lavished in a direction where the pledge of a dukedom had not been irrational, if the object could not have been otherwise accomplished. Next a row of Medoc claimed the enraptured attention; delicately overspread with the dust of years, but flashing through the filmy covering the undeniable blood of the Honduras forest. Here might one well pause and indulge in Clautian memories: the violent remonstrances of Nature against, and her subsequent acquiescence in, the primal draughts of vin ordinaire, whether expertly served by a Delmonico, or carelessly decanted by the Hibernian attendant in the gorgeous saloon of a Taylor; next the ascent to St. Julien, Number 2, when haply a friend from the country lingers at the office, and you see no way of escape but an exodus in quest of chicken and green peas; a blushing crimson at the surface and unknown clouds below; then the De Grave in delicate flagons, a fit sacrifice to the exquisite tastes of the editor who is to notice your forthcoming volume, or to the epicurean palate of some surcharged capitalist, into whose custody you are about to negotiate some land-grant bonds. Recovering from these delicious souvenirs, your attention was drawn to the Sauternes, indisputably titled at a Wall Street sale, and priceless. This wine had never yet been tasted, for Roseton was wont to say, 'I only care for vitriol when it is a hundred years old,' and this had only seen the summer of twenty. But a precious odor breathed from the casks, and the corroding capsules confessed the mighty powers that lurked within. Inhaling this odor, you seemed to see the Original White Hermit himself, brooding over his tiny principality of barren rock, and performing miracles with the aid of the imported carboy and the indigenous rill. As the evening gloomed, and twilight fell among the crags, a faint snicker spread upon the air, and in the dim light of the rising moon one might fancy a finger laid to the side of the nose of the holy man. From these reveries, a smart blow on the back, neatly executed by the butler, recalled your active attention to a demi-john of warranted French brandy, and a can of Bourbon certified by the hand-writing of Louis Capet himself. Upon the sawdust in the lower niches of the vault lay packages of the finest Hollands, wicker casements of Curaçoa, and the apple-jack of Jersey in gleaming glass. But the eye dwelt finally, and with a crowning wonder and approval, upon an entire basket of the celebrated eleven-dollar Heidsieck champagne, blue label, that lay upon the floor of the crypt.
The acquisition of this treasure was one of those rare good-fortunes by which the life of here and there an individual is illustrated. About a year previous to this, in the dead of night, a mysterious stranger solicited audience of the master of Pont-Noir. Attended by the entire force of the house in complete armor, Roseton granted the interview. The stranger advanced within easy gun-shot, and said:—'The great house of Boscobello, Bolaro and Company is in imminent peril. Unless a certain sum can be [pg 216] raised by two o'clock to-morrow, their acceptances will lie over. These acceptances constitute the entire loan and discount line of thirty-eight of the Banks of this city, for they have latterly made it a rule to take nothing else.' A meaning glance shot from the stranger's eye as he delivered this fearful announcement, but Roseton remained firm, though a cold shiver passed through the frames of his domestics, who were aware how vitally he was interested. 'The pledge of their stock of wine alone,' continued the mysterious visitant, 'will relieve them from their difficulties, and the capitalists then stand ready to carry them forward if they will retire from the Southern trade. Ten hundred nickels is the sum required, and I stand prepared to deliver the security by ten o'clock, A.M. The discount is immense, but the exigencies of the case are weighty.'
A consultation ensued. The bill for the kitchen crockery had just come in, and a set of three-tined forks were badly needed; but Roseton's intellect grasped the necessities of the operation, and the necessary funds were ordered to be advanced; and the pledge, now forever forfeited by the loan clause of the Revised Statutes, lay upon the floor of the vault.