Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges

by William Makepeace Thackeray

This harangue was uttered with rapid gesticulations such as the French use, and in the language of that nation. The prince striding up and down the room; his face flushed, and his hands trembling with anger. He was very thin and frail from repeated illness and a life of pleasure. Either Castlewood or Esmond could have broke him across their knee, and in half a minute's struggle put an end to him; and here he was insulting us both, and scarce deigning to hide from the two, whose honour it most concerned, the passion he felt for the young lady of our family. My Lord Castlewood replied to the prince's tirade very nobly and simply.

“Sir,” says he, “your royal highness is pleased to forget that others risk their lives, and for your cause. Very few Englishmen, please God, would dare to lay hands on your sacred person, though none would ever think of respecting ours. Our family's lives are at your service, and everything we have except our honour.”

“Honour! bah, sir, who ever thought of hurting your honour?” says the prince, with a peevish air.

“We implore your royal highness never to think of hurting it,” says Lord Castlewood, with a low bow. The night being warm, the windows were open both towards the gardens and the square. Colonel Esmond heard through the closed door the voice of the watchman calling the hour, in the square on the other side. He opened the door communicating with the prince's room; Martin, the servant that had rode with Beatrix to Hounslow, was just going out of the chamber as Esmond entered it, and when the fellow was gone, and the watchman again sang his cry of “Past ten o'clock, and a starlight night,” Esmond spoke to the prince [pg 443] in a low voice, and said—“Your royal highness hears that man?”

“Après, monsieur?” says the prince.

“I have but to beckon him from the window, and send him fifty yards, and he returns with a guard of men, and I deliver up to him the body of the person calling himself James the Third, for whose capture Parliament hath offered a reward of 5,000l., as your royal highness saw on our ride from Rochester. I have but to say the word, and, by the Heaven that made me, I would say it if I thought the prince, for his honour's sake, would not desist from insulting ours. But the first gentleman of England knows his duty too well to forget himself with the humblest, or peril his crown for a deed that were shameful if it were done.”

“Has your lordship anything to say,” says the prince, turning to Frank Castlewood, and quite pale with anger; “any threat or any insult, with which you would like to end this agreeable night's entertainment?”

“I follow the head of our house,” says Castlewood, bowing gravely. “At what time shall it please the prince that we should wait upon him in the morning?”

“You will wait on the Bishop of Rochester early, you will bid him bring his coach hither; and prepare an apartment for me in his own house, or in a place of safety. The king will reward you handsomely, never fear, for all you have done in his behalf. I wish you a good night, and shall go to bed, unless it pleases the Marquis of Esmond to call his colleague, the watchman, and that I should pass the night with the Kensington guard. Fare you well, be sure I will remember you. My Lord Castlewood, I can go to bed to-night without need of a chamberlain.” And the prince dismissed us with a grim bow, locking one door as he spoke, that into the supping-room, and the other through which we passed, after us. It led into the small chamber which Frank Castlewood or Monsieur Baptiste occupied, and by which Martin entered when Colonel Esmond but now saw him in the chamber.

At an early hour next morning the bishop arrived, and was closeted for some time with his master in his own apartment, where the prince laid open to his counsellor the wrongs which, according to his version, he had received from the gentlemen of the Esmond family. The worthy prelate came out from the conference with an air of great [pg 444] satisfaction; he was a man full of resources, and of a most assured fidelity, and possessed of genius, and a hundred good qualities; but captious and of a most jealous temper, that could not help exulting at the downfall of any favourite; and he was pleased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond ministry was at an end.