And le coup came with a vengeance; for Davenant, who hates a French play worse than poison, had just found something overpoweringly ridiculous in the woes of “L’Orphelin de la Chine,” and bursting into an ungovernable shriek of laughter, dropped some six or seven quarto volumes upon the wounded foot of our unfortunate stoic. He fell on the floor, in agony, and almost in a passion.
“Damnation!—n’importe! My sweet Davenant, how could you—— Peregrine, my good fellow, do pull the bell! Horrible! Why, Cecil, how out of your wits you look! Ave Maria! Vive la bagatelle! Why you look like a diable!—like a physician called in too late—mort de ma vie!—or like a—monstre!—like a wood demon at the English Opera House. Ring again, Courtenay! Ha, ha!—I played one myself once—Oh! que c’est affreux!—for a wager, ha, ha!—Oh!—with a long torch, ha, ha!—fire and brimstone!—with long black hair—peste!—but it would never stand on end like yours! oh que non! Ring again, Courtenay!—Eh! Perpignan! here has been a fall! a fall,—as they say upon ‘Change. Cher Perpignan: take me to bed, Perpignan; take it easy—doucement! Ah! the wood demon, Davenant! I shall never get over it!—ha, ha!—Oh!—--”
And thus was Marmaduke carried off, laughing, and screaming, and jesting, and swearing, by turns. His medical attendant was summoned, and we saw him no more[Pg 247] that night; he sent us word that he was as well as could be expected, but that he should never get over the wood demon, in spite of which consolatory intelligence Davenant wore a Tyburn countenance the whole evening.
We met, however, the next morning, and proceeded most laudably to remember nothing of the accident but its absurdity. “I never found Voltaire heavy before,” said Villars, shaking Davenant by the hand; “but you poets of the Lake are so horribly in the habit of taking liberties with your own feet that you have no compassion at all for those of your friends. Mercy upon my five toes! they will not meet in a boot for a twelvemonth; and now, àpropos de bottes, we must have some breakfast.”
Rain confined us to the house, the newspapers were full of advertisements, and the billiard-table was undergoing repair. Davenant endeavoured to define intensity, and I endeavoured to sleep; Marmaduke struck his sister’s tambourine, and the great clock struck one. We began to feel as uncomfortably idle as a gaol-bird who has just been put in, or a Minister who has just been turned out. At last some notice was taken of two miniatures of our friend and his sister, which had been done many years ago, and now hung on opposite sides of the mantelpiece, gazing tenderly at one another in all the holiday magnificence which was conferred by laced cap and pink ribbons upon the one, and by sky-blue jacket and sugar-loaf buttons upon the other. Hence we began to talk of painting, and of “Raphael, Correggio, and stuff,” until it was determined that we should proceed to make a pilgrimage through a long gallery of family portraits, which Marmaduke assured us had been covered with commendations and cobwebs ever since he left his cradle. He hobbled before us on his crutches, and made a very sufficient cicerone. Marmaduke has no wit; but he has a certain off-hand manner which often passes for it, and is sometimes as good a thing.
“That old gentleman,” he began, pointing to a magnificent fellow in rich chain armour, whose effigies occupied one end of the gallery, “that old gentleman is the founder of the family. Blessings on his beard! I almost fancy it[Pg 248] has grown longer since I saw it last. He fought inordinately at Harfleur and Agincourt, was eminently admired and bruised, won a whole grove of laurels, and lost three fingers and a thumb. See, over his head is the crest which was his guerdon; a little finger rampant, and the motto blazoned gorgeously round, ‘Mon doyt est mon droit!’”
“A splendid servant of the sword,” said Davenant; “what a glorious scope of forehead, and what a lowering decision in the upper lip. A real soldier! He would have cleft down a dozen of your modern male figurantes!”
“Perhaps so,” replied Villars; “but you see he made a bad hand of it, notwithstanding. His nephew, there, is something more soberly habited, but he was not a jot less mad. Who would dream of such a frenzy in sackcloth and sad countenance? He was a follower of Wyckliffe before it was the fashion, and——”
“An excellent piece of workmanship too! I like to see some fury in a man’s faith. Who can endure a minister of the gospel mounting his pulpit at Marylebone, with his well-ordered bands, and his clean manuscript, and his matter-of-fact disquisition, and his matter-of-course tone! That bald apostle has lips I could have listened to: he might have been an enthusiast, or a bigot, or a madman, or e’en what you will; but he has a show of zeal, and an assumption of authority; there is fire about the old man!”
“There was once,” said Marmaduke, “for he was burned in Smithfield. Come hither, here is a young fellow you will admire—Everard the Beautiful (by the way, they say he is like me), who fell in love with the pretty Baroness de Pomeroy. He used to sing under her balcony at midnight, out of pure gallantry, and out of all tune: catching sighs from the high window, and colds from the high wind. He was full three years wailing and whispering, and dreaming and dying, and smarting in the left breast, and sonneting in the left turret. At last came the fifth act of the drama, death and happiness blended together with strict poetic propriety; the fates threw him into her arms one night, and the baron threw him into the moat one morning.[Pg 249]”