Confessions Of Con Cregan Part 74

From what I had already observed of life, the great mistake of rich men seemed to me, their addiction to some one pursuit of pleasure, which gradually gained an undue ascendency over their minds, and exercised at last an unwonted degree of tyranny. The pa.s.sion for play, the love of pictures, the taste for company-seeing, the sports of the field, and so on, ought never to be allowed any paramount place, or used as pursuits; all these things should be simply employed as means of obtaining an ascendency over other men, and of exercising that sway which is never denied to success.

Some men are your slaves because your cook is unrivalled, or your cellar incomparable: others look up to you because your equipages exhibit an elegance with which none can vie; because your thoroughbreds are larger, show more bone, and carry the highest condition. Others, again, revere you for your Vand.y.k.es and your t.i.tians, your Rem brandts and Murillos, your illuminated missals, your antique marbles. To every section of society you can exhibit some peculiar and special temptation, which, in their blind admiration, they refer to as an attribute of yourself.

Your own fault is it if they ever discover their error! The triumphs of Raphael and Velasquez shed a reflected light upon him who possesses them; and so of each excellence that wealth can purchase. You stand embodied in the exercise of your taste, and in your own person receive the adulation which greatness and genius have achieved.

To accomplish this, however, requires infinite tact and a great abrogation of self. All individuality must be merged, and a new character created, from the "disjecta membra" of many crafts and callings.

To have any one inordinate pa.s.sion is to betray a weak spot in one's armor of which the cunning will soon take advantage. Such were among my meditations as I rolled along towards Paris; and so long as I journeyed alone, with no other companionship than my own thoughts, these opinions appeared sage and well reasoned; but how soon were they routed as I drove into that gorgeous capital, and saw the full tide of its pleasure-loving inhabitants as it rolled proudly past! How vain to reason farther upon the regulation of a life to which wealth set no limits! how impossible to restrain one's self within the barriers of cold prudential thought, where all was to be had for asking!

Ah, Con, your philosophy was excellent while, sitting in the corner of your coupe, you rolled along unnoticed, save by the vacant stare of some vigneron in a blue cotton nightcap, or some short-legged wench in wooden "sabots;" but now that you stand in the window of your great hotel in the Place Vendome and see the gathering crowd which inquires, who is the ill.u.s.trious arrival? your heart begins to beat quicker and fuller; you feel like a great actor, for whom the house is already impatient; nor is the curtain to remain longer down. You are scarcely an hour in Paris when your visitors began to call. Here are cards without number,--officers in high command, courtiers, ministers, and aides-decamp of those whose rank precludes the first visit. The "place"

is like a fair, with its crush of equipages, the hotel is actually besieged. Every language of Europe is heard within its "porte-cochere,"

and your own cha.s.seur is overwhelmed with questionings enough to drive him distracted.

Is it any wonder how the poor man adulates wealth, when those in high station--the great and t.i.tled of the earth--are so ready to worship and revere it!

My first care was, of course, to present myself before the Prince, my gracious master, and I drove at once to the Tuileries. There was a reception that morning by the King, and the Duc de St. Cloud led me forward and presented me to his Majesty, with a very eulogistic account of my services in Africa.

The King listened most graciously to the narrative, and then, with a cordial courtesy that at once put me at my ease, asked me several questions about my campaigns, all ingeniously contrived to be complimentary to me.

"Yours is not originally a Spanish family, Count; I fancy the name is Celtic."

"Yes, Sire, we came from Ireland," said I, blushing in spite of myself.

"Ah, very true. There was always a great interchange of races between the two nations. And have you never tried to trace back among your Irish ancestors, so as to learn who are the lineal descendants of your house?"

"I have been hitherto, Sire, rather a man of action than of thought or reflection. To obtain possession of a property belonging to my family, I undertook a journey to, and a long residence in, Mexico; and although successful in this, a subsequent misfortune deprived me of all I owned, and left me actually in want. The good fortune which led me to take service under your Majesty has, however, never deserted me, and I am enabled once again to a.s.sume the station that belonged to me."

The King heard me with apparent pleasure, and after a few generalities about Paris and my acquaintances, said: "His Royal Highness the Duc de St. Cloud has asked me to appoint you on my personal staff. There is not at the present a vacancy, but you shall be named as an extra aide-de-camp in the meanwhile."

Overwhelmed by this distinction, I could only bow my grat.i.tude in silence; and, with an air and show of great devotion, I retired from the royal presence. Thus did proper feeling suggest the truest politeness; for had I been more a.s.sured, the chances were I should have endeavored to say something, and consequently committed a very grievous breach of etiquette.

The following day I received an invitation to dine at Court. The company was numerous, and among them I discovered the young English attache who had so insolently treated my demands on my first visit to Paris. With what sovereign contempt did I now look down upon him! He was there, exactly as I left him, muddling away in the petty details of his little routine life,--signing a pa.s.sport or copying a despatch, playing off the airs of grand seigneur to couriers and laquais de place, while in the same time I had won honors and rewards upon the field of battle, and now stood while the Prince leaned upon my arm and chatted familiarly over the a.s.sembled company. Nothing gave me a more confident sense of my own standing in the world than the feeling with which I now regarded those whom once I looked up to with a kind of awe. It is precisely as we discover that the hills which in childhood we believed to be gigantic mountains are mere hillocks, that in after life we find out how indescribably small are many of those we used to think of as "high and mighty."

I therefore sneered down my poor attache, and as I pa.s.sed him, I believe I even suffered my sabre to jar against his leg, not without hoping that he might notice the slight, and seek satisfaction for it. In this I was disappointed, and I left him, never to trouble my head more about him.

Among the pleasures which awaited me in Paris, none gave me more sincere satisfaction than the renewal of my acquaintance with De Minerale, who, however, could never believe that my good fortune was other than some lucky accident of my African campaign.

"Come, out with it," he would say. "You robbed a 'Smala,' you pillaged a 'Deira,' or something of the sort. Tell me frankly how it was, and, on my honor, I 'll never print it till you 're dead and gone. In fact, if you persist in refusing, I 'll give you to the world, with name in full.

I 'll describe you as a fellow that picked up a treasure in some small island of the Mediterranean, and turned millionnaire after being a pirate."

"Put me down for fifty copies of the book," said I, laughing; "I'm rich enough now to encourage the small-fry of literature."

Thus did we often jest with each other, and we met continually; for when not invited out myself, I gave entertainments at home, at which I a.s.sembled various members of that artistic set in which I had once moved,--a very different order of society from that in which I mixed in Naples, and, I am free to own, with far less claim to real agreeability.

The "wits by profession" were not only less natural than the smart people of society, but they wearied you by the exactions of their drollery. Not to laugh at the sorriest jest was to discredit the jester, and the omission became a serious thing when it touched a man's livelihood. In fact, from first to last, in whatever country I have lived, I have ever found that the best--that is, the highest society--was always the most agreeable as well as the most profitable.

Its forms were not alone regulated upon the surest basis of comfort, but its tone ever tended to promote whatever was pleasurable, and exclude everything that could hurt or offend. So is it, your great aristocrats are very democratic in a drawing-room,--professing and practising the most perfect equality; while your "rights of man" and "popular sovereignty advocate" insists upon always being the king of his company.

Forgive this digression, my dear reader, if for nothing else than because it shall be the last time of my offending.

I had now enjoyed myself at Paris about two months, or thereabouts, in which, having most satisfactorily arranged all my monetary matters, and--besides having a considerable sum in the English funds--found myself down in the "Grand Livre" for a couple of million of francs,--a feature which made me a much-caressed individual in that new social order just then springing up, called the "financiere" cla.s.s, one which, if with few claims to the stately manners of the "Faubourg," numbered as many pretty women and as agreeable ones as could be found anywhere.

Had I been matrimonially disposed, this set would certainly have been dangerous ground for me,--the attentions which beset me being almost like adulation. The truth was, however, Donna Maria had left an impression which comparison with others did not efface. I felt, if I were to marry, it might as well be for high rank and family influence, since I never could do so for love. My n.o.bility required a little strengthening, nor was there any easier or more efficient mode of supporting it than by an alliance with some of those antiquated houses who, with small fortunes but undiminished pride, inhabited the solitudes of the "Faubourg St. Germain." I cannot afford s.p.a.ce here to recount my adventures in that peaceful and deserted quarter, whose amus.e.m.e.nts ranged between ma.s.ses and tric-trac,--where Piety and Pope Joan divided the hours. The antiquity of my family and the pureness of my Castilian blood! had been the pretensions which obtained admission for me into these sacred precincts; and there, I must say, everything seemed old and worn out: the houses, the salons, the furniture, the masters, servants, horses, carriages,--all were as old as the formalities and the opinions they professed.

Even the young ladies had got a premature cast of seriousness that took away every semblance of juvenility. Whether from a.s.sociating with them, or that I had voluntarily conformed to the staid Puritanism of their manners, I cannot say, but my other acquaintances began to quiz and rally me about my "Legitimist" air, and even said that the change had been remarked at Court.

This was an observation that gave me some uneasiness, and I hastened off to the Duc de St. Cloud, whose kindness had always admitted me to the most open intercourse.

"It is quite true, Creganne," said he, "we all remarked that you were coquetting with the 'vieux,'--the old ones of the Faubourg; and although _I_ had never any misgivings about you, _others_ were less charitable."

"What is to be done, then?" said I, in my distress at the bare thought of seeming ungrateful.

"I'll tell you," said he: "there's the post of secretary of emba.s.sy just vacant at Madrid; your knowledge of the language, and your Spanish blood, admirably fit you for the mission. Shall I ask for it in your behalf?"

I could scarcely speak, for grat.i.tude. I was longing for some "charge,"

some public station that would give me a recognized position as well as wealth.

The "Duc" hurried from the room, and after an absence of half-an-hour came back, laughing, to say: "This was quite a brilliant idea of mine, for the Minister of Foreign Affairs was just in conversation with the King, and seeing that they were both in good humor, and discussing the Madrid mission, I even asked for the post of amba.s.sador for you,--ay, and, what's better, obtained it, too."

I could not believe my ears as I heard these words, and the Prince was obliged to repeat his tidings ere I could bring myself to credit them.

"And now for a little plan of my own," resumed he; "I am about to make a short visit to England, and, better still, to Ireland. You must accompany me. Of course I travel 'incog.,' which means that my real rank will be known to all persons in authority; but, avoiding all state and parade, I shall be able to see something of that remarkable country of which I have heard so much."

I acknowledged a degree of curiosity to the full as great, but bewailed my ignorance of the language as a great drawback to the pleasures of the journey.

"But you do know a little English," said the Prince.

"Not a word," said I, coolly. "When a child, I believe I could speak it fluently,--so I have heard; but since that period I have utterly forgotten all about it." This may seem to have been a gratuitous fiction on my part, but it was not so; and to prove it, I must tell the reader a little incident which was running in my mind at that moment. A certain Tipperary gentleman, whose name is too familiar for me to print, once called upon a countryman in Paris, and, after ringing stoutly at the bell, the door was opened by a very smartly dressed "maid," whose grisette cap and ap.r.o.n immediately seemed to p.r.o.nounce her to be French.

"Est Capitaine,--est Monsieur O'Shea ici?" asked he, in considerable hesitation.

"Oh, sir! you're English," exclaimed the maid, in a very London accent.

"Yes, my little darlin', I was asking for Captain O'Shea."

"Ah, sir, you 're Irish!" said she, with a very significant fall of the voice. "So," as he afterwards remarked, "my French showed that I was English, and my English that I was Irish."

Now, although my French would have pa.s.sed muster from Cannes to Caen, my English had something of the idiomatic peculiarity of the gentleman just alluded to; and were I only to speak once in Ireland, I must be inevitably detected. There was then no choice for it; I must even consent to talk through an interpreter,--a rather dull situation for a man about to "tour it" in Ireland!

As the Prince's journey was a secret in Paris, our arrangements were made with great caution and despatch. We travelled down to Boulogne with merely one other companion, an old Colonel Demaunais, who had been for some years a prisoner in England, and spoke English fluently, and with only three servants; there was nothing in our "cortege" betraying the rank of his Royal Highness.

Apartments had been prepared for us at Mivart's, and we dined each day at the French Emba.s.sy,--going to the Opera in the evening, and sight-seeing all the forenoon, like genuine "country cousins." The Court was in Scotland; but even had it been in London, I conclude that the Prince would have been received in some mode which should not have attracted publicity.

Ten days sufficed for "town," and we set out for Ireland, to visit which his Royal Highness was all impatience and eagerness.

Never can I forget the sensations with which I landed on that sh.o.r.e, which, about a dozen years before, I had quitted barefooted and hungry!

Was the change alone in me; or what had come over the objects, to make them so very different from what they once were? The hotel that I remembered to have regarded as a kind of palace, where splendor and profusion prevailed, seemed now dirty and uncared-for; the waiters slovenly, the landlord rude, the apartments mean, and the food detestable! The public itself, as it paraded on the pier, was not that gorgeous panorama I once saw there,--the mingled elegance and fashion I used to regard with such eyes of wonderment and envy. What had become of them? Good looks there were, and in abundance,--for Irish women will be pretty, no matter what changes come over the land; but the men! good lack, what a strange aspect did they present! Without the air of fashion you see in Paris, or that more strongly marked characteristic of style and manliness the parks of London exhibit, here were displayed a kind of swaggering self-sufficiency whose pretension was awfully at variance with the mediocrity of their dress, and the easy jocularity that leered from their eyes. Some were aquatics, and wore Jersey shirts and frocks, loose trousers, and low shoes; but they overdid their parts, and lounged like Tom Cooke in a sea-piece.

Others appeared as _elegans_, and were even greater burlesques on the part. It was quite clear, however, that these formed no portion of the better cla.s.ses of the capital, and so I hastened to a.s.sure the Prince, whose looks bespoke very palpable disappointment.

In Dublin, however, the changes were greater than I expected. It was not alone that I had seen other and greater capitals, where affluence and taste abound, and where, while the full tide of fashion sets "in" in one quarter, the still more exciting course of activity and industry flows along in another; but here an actual decline had taken place in the appearance of everything. The shops, the streets, the inhabitants, all looked in disrepair. There were few carriages, nothing deserving the name of equipage,--none of that stir and movement which characterize a capital. It all looked like a place where people dwelt to wear out their old houses and old garments, and to leave both behind them when no longer wearable. Windows mended with paper, pantaloon? patched with party-colored cloth, "shocking bad hats," mangy car-drivers, and great troops of beggars of every age and walk of mendicancy, were met with even iu the best quarters; and with all these signs of poverty and decay, there was an air of swaggering recklessness in every one that was particularly striking All were out of temper with England and English rule; and "Ireland for the Irish" was becoming a popular cant phrase,--pretty much on the same principle that blacklegs extinguish the lights when luck goes against them, and have a scramble for "the bank"

in the dark. The strangest of all was, however, that n.o.body seemed to have died or left the place since I remembered it as a boy. There went the burly barrister down Bachelor's Walk, with the same st.u.r.dy stride I used to admire of yore,--his cheek a little redder, his presence somewhat more portly, perhaps, but with the self-same smile with which he then cajoled the jury, and that imposing frown with which he repelled the freedom of a witness. There were the same civic magistrates, the same attorneys, dancing-masters,--ay, even the dandies had not been replaced, but were the old crop, sadly running to seed, and marvellously ill cared for.

Even the Castle officials were beautifully consistent, and true to their old traditions; they were as empty and insolent as ever. It was the English pale performed over again at the Upper Castle Yard, and all without its limits were the kerns and "wild Irish" of centuries ago.