He Brought Strange Gentlemen Home to Dine.
Leech has pretty well marked the profession of the "strange gentlemen" in this admirable drawing; their attitudes, the cut of their clothes, the character in their figures, to say nothing of the sticking-plaster on a face that could belong to no one but a "fighting man," sufficiently proclaim their habits. The figure of the Count is tragic in its intensity of drunken self-abandonment.
A leg of solid gold would, no doubt, if turned into cash, represent a large sum of money. It seems to have been the determination of the Countess, while still Miss Kilmansegg, to have reserved to herself all rights over the golden leg, for that auriferous limb was settled, as well as fixed upon herself, to be disposed of by will or otherwise, as she pleased. Says the poet:
"So the Countess, then Miss Kilmansegg,
At her marriage refused to stir a peg
Till her lawyers had fastened on her leg,
As fast as the law could tie it."
Means which seem illimitable very speedily vanish when they fall into the hands of such people as the foreign Count. It was said of a famous roué of the last century that he "practised every vice except prodigality and hypocrisy—his insatiable avarice exempted him from the first, and his matchless impudence from the second." Our Count seems to have surpassed his prototype, whose "impudence" may not have been of the brutal character from which the poor Countess suffered; whilst a slight dash of avarice might have prevented the golden leg from being all that was left of her golden fortune.
The following lines eloquently describe the Count's state of mind after his orgies:
"And then how wildly he used to stare,
And shake his fist at nothing, and swear,
And pluck by the handful his shaggy hair,
Till he looked like a study of Giant Despair
For a new edition of Bunyan!
"For dice will run the contrary way,
As is well known to all who play,
And cards will conspire as in treason."
At all events, cards, dice, and other expensive amusements had so reduced the Count that he had not a leg to stand upon, except his wife's golden one, and as that limb was in her own control, it was but a doubtful security. The Countess had made a will in which the leg was left to the Count, but life is uncertain—the Countess might outlive her husband; moreover, he was so placed that delay was not only dangerous, but inconvenient. The chronicler thus continues: