Jekyll declared to Lady Blessington that he “was asked gravely if quinine was invented by Doctor Quin!”
Here is a quaint little note to the Doctor:—
“Gore House, Saturday.
“My Dear Dr Quin,—M. Pipelet (D’Orsay) requests that you will send him the letter about Mr ⸺ you promised he should have. I suppose it is in vain to tell you we are going to the Opera to-night. Of course you have 999 impatient patients who must see you every five minutes throughout the course of the day and night, and as many more friends who expect you to dinner. However, en passant, I venture to hint that we go with Mdme. Calabrella, so if you manage to kill off the maladies, and put the friends under the table in turn, we shall be delighted to see you ready and waiting, as Homer says in the fifth book of the Iliad, line forty-nine. Farewell, may you be happy whilst I—Sobs choke my utterance. Adieu.”
XXIII
EXCHEQUER BONDS
D’Orsay might have been a great artist and a great man of letters; of his genius as a financier there is no doubt. He solved the question of how to obtain unlimited credit; he paid such debts as he did cancel with money which legally was his, but which almost any other man would not have cared to touch.
Lord Blessington is said, when he persuaded D’Orsay to abandon his career in the French army, to have undertaken to provide for the Count’s future, and he fulfilled his promise at the expense of his daughter’s happiness and of the family estates.