nd enjoyed
as pleasant a summer tour as any pair that left England
that year.  Georgy was always present at the play, but
it was the Major who put Emmy's shawl on after the
entertainment; and in the walks and excursions the young
lad would be on ahead, and up a tower-stair or a tree,
whilst the soberer couple were below, the Major smoking
his cigar with great placidity and constancy, whilst Emmy
sketched the site or the ruin.  It was on this very tour that
I, the present writer of a history of which every word is
true, had the pleasure to see them first and to make their
acquaintance.

It was at the little comfortable Ducal town of
Pumpernickel (that very place where Sir Pitt Crawley
had been so distinguished as an attache; but that was in
early early days, and before the news of the Battle of
Austerlitz sent all the English diplomatists in Germany to
the right about) that I first saw Colonel Dobbin and
his party.  They had arrived with the carriage and courier
at the Erbprinz Hotel, the best of the town, and the whole
party dined at the table d'hote.  Everybody remarked
the majesty of Jos and the knowing way in which he
sipped, or rather sucked, the Johannisberger, which he
ordered for dinner.  The little boy, too, we observed, had
a famous appetite, and consumed schinken, and braten,
and kartoffeln, and cranberry jam, and salad, and
pudding, and roast fowls, and sweetmeats, with a gallantry
that did honour to his nation.  After about fifteen dishes,
he concluded the repast with dessert, some of which he
even carried out of doors, for some young gentlemen at
table, amused with his coolness and gallant free-and-easy
manner, induced him to pocket a handful of macaroons,
which he discussed on his way to the theatre, whither
everybody went in the cheery social little German place.
The lady in black, the boy's mamma, laughed and blushed,
and looked exceedingly pleased and shy as the dinner
went on, and at the various feats and instances of
espieglerie on the part of her son.  The Colonel--
for so he became very soon afterwards--I remember
joked the boy with a great deal of grave fun, pointing
out dishes which he hadn't tried, and entreating him not
to baulk his appetite, but to have a second supply of
this or that.

It was what they call a gast-rolle night at the Royal
Grand Ducal Pumpernickelisch Hof--or Court theatre--
and Madame Schroeder Devrient, then in the bloom of
her beauty and genius, performed the part of the heroine
in the wonderful opera of Fidelio.  From our places in the
stalls we could see our four friends of the table d'hote
in the loge which Schwendler of the Erbprinz kept for his
best guests, and I could not help remarking the effect
which the magnificent actress and music produced upon
Mrs. Osborne, for so we heard the stout gentleman in
the mustachios call her.  During the astonishing Chorus
of the Prisoners, over which the delightful voice of the
actress rose and soared in the most ravishing harmony,
the English lady's face wore such an expression of wonder
and delight that it struck even little Fipps, the blase
attache, who drawled out, as he fixed his glass upon her,
"Gayd, it really does one good to see a woman caypable
of that stayt of excaytement." And in the Prison Scene,
where Fidelio, rushing to her husband, cries, "Nichts,
nichts, mein Florestan," she fairly lost herself and
covered her face with her handkerchief.  Every woman in the
house was snivelling at the time, but I suppose it was
because it was predestined that I was to write this
particular lady's memoirs that I remarked her.

The next day they gave another piece of Beethoven,
Die Schlacht bei Vittoria.  Malbrook is introduced at the
beginning of the performance, as indicative of the brisk
advance of the French army.  Then come drums, trumpets,
thunders of artillery, and groans of the dying, and at last,
in a grand triumphal swell, "God Save the King" is
performed.

There may have been a score of Englishmen in the
house, but at the burst of that beloved and well-known
music, every one of them, we young fellows in the stalls,
Sir John and Lady Bullminster (who had taken a house
at Pumpernickel for the education of their nine
children), the fat gentleman with the mustachios, the long
Major in white duck trousers, and the lady with the little
boy upon whom he was so sweet, even Kirsch, the courier
in the gallery, stood bolt upright in their places and
proclaimed themselves to be members of the dear old British
nation.  As for Tapeworm, the Charge d'Affaires, he rose
up in his box and bowed and simpered, as if he would
represent the whole empire.  Tapeworm was nephew and
heir of old Marshal Tiptoff, who has been introduced in
this story as General Tiptoff, just before Waterloo, who
was Colonel of the --th regiment in which Major Dobbin
served, and who died in this year full of honours, and of
an aspic of plovers' eggs; when the regiment was graciously
given by his Majesty to Colonel Sir Michael O'Dowd,
K.C.B.  who had commanded it in many glorious fields.

Tapeworm must have met with Colonel Dobbin at the
house of the Colonel's Colonel, the Marshal, for he
recognized him on this night at the theatre, and with the
utmost condescension, his Majesty's minister came over
from his own box and publicly shook hands with his
new-found friend.

"Look at that infernal sly-boots of a Tapeworm,"
Fipps whispered, examining his chief from the stalls.
"Wherever there's a pretty woman he always twists
himself in." And I wonder what were diplomatists made for
but for that?

"Have I the honour of addressing myself to Mrs.
Dobbin?" asked the Secretary with a most insinuating grin.

Georgy burst out laughing and said, "By Jove, that was
a good 'un." Emmy and the Major blushed:  we saw them
from the stalls.

"This lady is Mrs. George Osborne," said the Major,
"and this is her brother, Mr. Sedley, a distinguished
officer of the Bengal Civil Service:  permit me to introduce
him to your lordship."

My lord nearly sent Jos off his legs with the most
fascinating smile.  "Are you going to stop in Pumpernickel?"
he said.  "It is a dull place, but we want some nice people,
and we would try and make it SO agreeable to you.  Mr.--
Ahum--Mrs.--Oho.  I shall do myself the honour of calling
upon you to-morrow at your inn." And he went away
with a Parthian grin and glance which he thought must
finish Mrs. Osborne completely.

The performance over, the young fellows lounged about
the lobbies, and we saw the society take its departure.
The Duchess Dowager went off in her jingling old coach,
attended by two faithful and withered old maids of
honour, and a little snuffy spindle-shanked gentleman in
waiting, in a brown jasey and a green coat covered with
orders--of which the star and the grand yellow cordon of
the order of St.  Michael of Pumpernickel were most
conspicuous.  The drums rolled, the guards saluted, and the
old carriage drove away.

Then came his Transparency the Duke and Transparent
family, with his great officers of state and household.  He
bowed serenely to everybody.  And amid the saluting of
the guards and the flaring of the torches of the running
footmen, clad in scarlet, the Transparent carriages drove
away to the old Ducal schloss, with its towers and
pinacles standing on the schlossberg.  Everybody in
Pumpernickel knew everybody.  No sooner was a foreigner seen
there than the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or some other
great or small officer of state, went round to the Erbprinz
and found out the name of the new arrival.

We watched them, too, out of the theatre.  Tapeworm
had just walked off, enveloped in his cloak, with which
his gigantic chasseur was always in attendance, and
looking as much as possible like Don Juan.  The Prime
Minister's lady had just squeezed herself into her sedan,
and her daughter, the charming Ida, had put on her
calash and clogs; when the English party came out, the
boy yawning drearily, the Major taking great pains in
keeping the shawl over Mrs. Osborne's head, and Mr.
Sedley looking grand, with a crush opera-hat on one side
of his head and his hand in the stomach of a voluminous
white waistcoat.  We took off our hats to our acquaintances
of the table d'hote, and the lady, in return, presented us
with a little smile and a curtsey, for which
everybody might be thankful.

The carriage from the inn, under the superintendence
of the bustling Mr. Kirsch, was in waiting to convey the
party; but the fat man said he would walk and smoke his
cigar on his way homewards, so the other three, with
nods and smiles to us, went without Mr. Sedley, Kirsch,
with the cigar case, following in his master's wake.

We all walked together and talked to the stout gentleman
about the agremens of the place.  It was very agreeable
for the English.  There were shooting-parties and
battues; there was a plenty of balls and entertainments at
the hospitable Court; the society was generally good; the
theatre excellent; and the living cheap.

"And our Minister seems a most delightful and affable
person," our new friend said.  '~With such a representative,
and--and a good medical man, I can fancy the place to
be most eligible.  Good-night, gentlemen." And Jos
creaked up the stairs to bedward, followed by Kirsch with
a flambeau.  We rather hoped that nice-looking woman
would be induced to stay some time in the town.




CHAPTER LXIII


In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance

Such polite behaviour as that of Lord Tapeworm did
not fail to have the most favourable effect upon Mr.
Sedley's mind, and the very next morning, at breakfast, he
pronounced his opinion that Pumpernickel was the
pleasantest little place of any which he had visited on their
tour.  Jos's motives and artifices were not very difficult
of comprehension, and Dobbin laughed in his sleeve, like
a hypocrite as he was, when he found, by the knowing air
of the civilian and the offhand manner in which the
latter talked about Tapeworm Castle and the other members
of the family, that Jos had been up already in the morning,
consulting his travelling Peerage.  Yes, he had seen
the Right Honourable the Earl of Bagwig, his lordship's
father; he was sure he had, he had met him at--at the
Levee--didn't Dob remember? and when the Diplomatist
called on the party, faithful to his promise, Jos received
him with such a salute and honours as were seldom
accorded to the little Envoy.  He winked at Kirsch on his
Excellency's arrival, and that emissary, instructed before-
hand, went out and superintended an entertainment of
cold meats, jellies, and other delicacies, brought in upon
trays, and of which Mr. Jos absolutely insisted that his
noble guest should partake.

Tapeworm, so long as he could have an opportunity of
admiring the bright eyes of Mrs. Osborne (whose freshness
of complexion bore daylight remarkably well) was
not ill pleased to accept any invitation to stay in Mr.
Sedley's lodgings; he put one or two dexterous questions
to him about India and the dancing-girls there; asked
Amelia about that beautiful boy who had been with her;
and complimented the astonished little woman upon the
prodigious sensation which she had made in the house;
and tried to fascinate Dobbin by talking of the late war
and the exploits of the Pumpernickel contingent under the
command of the Hereditary Prince, now Duke of
Pumpernickel.

Lord Tapeworm inherited no little portion of the family
gallantry, and it was his happy belief that almost every
woman upon whom he himself cast friendly eyes was in
love with him.  He left Emmy under the persuasion that
she was slain by his wit and attractions and went home to
his lodgings to write a pretty little note to her.  She was
not fascinated, only puzzled, by his grinning, his simpering,
his scented cambric handkerchief, and his high-heeled
lacquered boots.  She did not understand one-half the
compliments which he paid; she had never, in her small
experience of mankind, met a professional ladies' man as
yet, and looked upon my lord as something curious rather
than pleasant; and if she did not admire, certainly
wondered at him.  Jos, on the contrary, was delighted.  "How
very affable his Lordship is," he said; "How very kind of
his Lordship to say he would send his medical man!
Kirsch, you will carry our cards to the Count de
Schlusselback directly; the Major and I will have the
greatest pleasure in paying our respects at Court as soon
as possible.  Put out my uniform, Kirsch--both our
uniforms.  It is a mark of politeness which every English
gentleman ought to show to the countries which he visits
to pay his respects to the sovereigns of those countries
as to the representatives of his own."

When Tapeworm's doctor came, Doctor von Glauber,
Body Physician to H.S.H.  the Duke, he speedily
convinced Jos that the Pumpernickel mineral springs and
the Doctor's particular treatment would infallibly restore
the Bengalee to youth and slimness.  "Dere came here last
year," he said, "Sheneral Bulkeley, an English Sheneral,
tvice so pic as you, sir.  I sent him back qvite tin after
tree months, and he danced vid Baroness Glauber at
the end of two."

Jos's mind was made up; the springs, the Doctor, the
Court, and the Charge d'Affaires convinced him, and he
proposed to spend the autumn in these delightful
quarters.  And punctual to his word, on the next day the
Charge d'Affaires presented Jos and the Major to Victor
Aurelius XVII, being conducted to their audience with
that sovereign by the Count de Schlusselback, Marshal
of the Court.

They were straightway invited to dinner at Court, and
their intention of staying in the town being announced,
the politest ladies of the whole town instantly called upon
Mrs. Osborne; and as not one of these, however poor
they might be, was under the rank of a Baroness, Jos's
delight was beyond expression.  He wrote off to Chutney
at the Club to say that the Service was highly appreciated
in Germany, that he was going to show his friend, the
Count de Schlusselback, how to stick a pig in the Indian
fashion, and that his august friends, the Duke and
Duchess, were everything that was kind and civil.

Emmy, too, was presented to the august family, and as
mourning is not admitted in Court on certain days, she
appeared in a pink crape dress with a diamond ornament
in the corsage, presented to her by her brother, and
she looked so pretty in this costume that the Duke and
Court (putting out of the question the Major, who had
scarcely ever seen her before in an evening dress, and
vowed that she did not look five-and-twenty) all admired
her excessively.

In this dress she walked a Polonaise with Major Dobbin
at a Court ball, in which easy dance Mr. Jos had the
honour of leading out the Countess of Schlusselback,
an old lady with a hump back, but with sixteen good
quarters of nobility and related to half the royal houses
of Germany.

Pumpernickel stands in the midst of a happy valley
through which sparkles--to mingle with the Rhine
somewhere, but I have not the map at hand to say exactly at
what point--the fertilizing stream of the Pump.  In some
places the river is big enough to support a ferry-boat, in
others to turn a mill; in Pumpernickel itself, the last
Transparency but three, the great and renowned Victor
Aurelius XIV built a magnificent bridge, on which his
own statue rises, surrounded by water-nymphs and
emblems of victory, peace, and plenty; he has his foot on the
neck of a prostrate Turk--history says he engaged and
ran a Janissary through the body at the relief of Vienna
by Sobieski--but, quite undisturbed by the agonies
of that prostrate Mahometan, who writhes at his feet in
the most ghastly manner, the Prince smiles blandly and
points with his truncheon in the direction of the Aurelius
Platz, where he began to erect a new palace that would
have been the wonder of his age had the great-souled
Prince but had funds to complete it.  But the completion
of Monplaisir (Monblaisir the honest German folks call
it) was stopped for lack of ready money, and it and its
park and garden are now in rather a faded condition,
and not more than ten times big enough to accommodate
the Court of the reigning Sovereign.

The gardens were arranged to emulate those of
Versailles, and amidst the terraces and groves there are
some huge allegorical waterworks still, which spout and
froth stupendously upon fete-days, and frighten one
with their enormous aquatic insurrections.  There is the
Trophonius' cave in which, by some artifice, the leaden
Tritons are made not only to spout water, but to play
the most dreadful groans out of their lead conchs--there
is the nymphbath and the Niagara cataract, which the
people of the neighbourhood admire beyond expression,
when they come to the yearly fair at the opening of the
Chamber, or to the fetes with which the happy little nation
still celebrates the birthdays and marriage-days of its
princely governors.

Then from all the towns of the Duchy, which stretches
for nearly ten mile--from Bolkum, which lies on
its western frontier bidding defiance to Prussia, from
Grogwitz, where the Prince has a hunting-lodge, and
where his dominions are separated by the Pump River
from those of the neighbouring Prince of Potzenthal; from
all the little villages, which besides these three great
cities, dot over the happy principality--from the farms
and the mills along the Pump come troops of people in
red petticoats and velvet head-dresses, or with three-
cornered hats and pipes in their mouths, who flock to the
Residenz and share in the pleasures of the fair and the
festivities there.  Then the theatre is open for nothing,
then the waters of Monblaisir begin to play (it is lucky
that there is company to behold them, for one would be
afraid to see them alone)--then there come mountebanks
and riding troops (the way in which his Transparency
was fascinated by one of the horse-riders is well known,
and it is believed that La Petite Vivandiere, as she was
called, was a spy in the French interest), and the delighted
people are permitted to march through room after room
of the Grand Ducal palace and admire the slippery
floor, the rich hangings, and the spittoons at the
doors of all the innumerable chambers.  There is one
Pavilion at Monblaisir which Aurelius Victor XV had
arranged--a great Prince but too fond of pleasure--and
which I am told is a perfect wonder of licentious elegance.
It is painted with the story of Bacchus and Ariadne, and
the table works in and out of the room by means of a
windlass, so that the company was served without any
intervention of domestics.  But the place was shut up by
Barbara, Aurelius XV's widow, a severe and devout
Princess of the House of Bolkum and Regent of the Duchy
during her son's glorious minority, and after the death
of her husband, cut off in the pride of his pleasures.

The theatre of Pumpernickel is known and famous in
that quarter of Germany.  It languished a little when the
present Duke in his youth insisted upon having his own
operas played there, and it is said one day, in a fury,
from his place in the orchestra, when he attended a
rehearsal, broke a bassoon on the head of the Chapel
Master, who was conducting, and led too slow; and during
which time the Duchess Sophia wrote domestic comedies,
which must have been very dreary to witness.  But the
Prince executes his music in private now, and the Duchess
only gives away her plays to the foreigners of distinction
who visit her kind little Court.

It is conducted with no small comfort and splendour.
When there are balls, though there may be four
hundred people at supper, there is a servant in scarlet and
lace to attend upon every four, and every one is served
on silver.  There are festivals and entertainments going
continually on, and the Duke has his chamberlains and
equerries, and the Duchess her mistress of the wardrobe
and ladies of honour, just like any other and more
potent potentates.

The Constitution is or was a moderate despotism,
tempered by a Chamber that might or might not be
elected.  I never certainly could hear of its sitting in my time
at Pumpernickel.  The Prime Minister had lodgings in a
second floor, and the Foreign Secretary occupied the
comfortable lodgings over Zwieback's Conditorey.  The
army consisted of a magnificent band that also did duty
on the stage, where it was quite pleasant to see the
worthy fellows marching in Turkish dresses with rouge on
and wooden scimitars, or as Roman warriors with
ophicleides and trombones--to see them again, I say, at
night, after one had listened to them all the morning in
the Aurelius Platz, where they performed opposite the
cafe where we breakfasted.  Besides the band, there was
a rich and numerous staff of officers, and, I believe, a
few men.  Besides the regular sentries, three or four men,
habited as hussars, used to do duty at the Palace, but I
never saw them on horseback, and au fait, what was the
use of cavalry in a time of profound peace?--and whither
the deuce should the hussars ride?

Everybody--everybody that was noble of course, for
as for the bourgeois we could not quite be expected to
take notice of THEM--visited his neighbour.  H.  E.  Madame
de Burst received once a week, H.  E.  Madame de
Schnurrbart had her night--the theatre was open twice
a week, the Court graciously received once, so that a
man's life might in fact be a perfect round of pleasure in
the unpretending Pumpernickel way.

That there were feuds in the place, no one can deny.
Politics ran very high at Pumpernickel, and parties were
very bitter.  There was the Strumpff faction and the
Lederlung party, the one supported by our envoy and the
other by the French Charge d'Affaires, M.  de Macabau.
Indeed it sufficed for our Minister to stand up for
Madame Strumpff, who was clearly the greater singer of the
two, and had three more notes in her voice than Madame
Lederlung her rival--it sufficed, I say, for our Minister to
advance any opinion to have it instantly contradicted
by the French diplomatist.

Everybody in the town was ranged in one or other of
these factions.  The Lederlung was a prettyish little
creature certainly, and her voice (what there was of it) was
very sweet, and there is no doubt that the Strumpff was
not in her first youth and beauty, and certainly too stout;
when she came on in the last scene of the Sonnambula,
for instance, in her night-chemise with a lamp in her
hand, and had to go out of the window, and pass over
the plank of the mill, it was all she could do to
squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend
and creak again under her weight--but how she poured
out the finale of the opera!  and with what a burst of
feeling she rushed into Elvino's arms--almost fit to
smother him!  Whereas the little Lederlung--but a truce
to this gossip--the fact is that these two women were
the two flags of the French and the English party at
Pumpernickel, and the society was divided in its
allegiance to those two great nations.

We had on our side the Home Minister, the Master of
the Horse, the Duke's Private Secretary, and the Prince's
Tutor; whereas of the French party were the Foreign
Minister, the Commander-in-Chief's Lady, who had
served under Napoleon, and the Hof-Marschall and his
wife, who was glad enough to get the fashions from
Pans, and always had them and her caps by M.  de
Macabau's courier.  The Secretary of his Chancery was little
Grignac, a young fellow, as malicious as Satan, and who
made caricatures of Tapeworm in all the-albums of the
place.

Their headquarters and table d'hote were established
at the Pariser Hof, the other inn of the town; and though,
of course, these gentlemen were obliged to be civil in
public, yet they cut at each other with epigrams that
were as sharp as razors, as I have seen a couple of
wrestlers in Devonshire, lashing at each other's shins
and never showing their agony upon a muscle of their
faces.  Neither Tapeworm nor Macabau ever sent home
a dispatch to his government without a most savage
series of attacks upon his rival.  For instance, on our side
we would write, "The interests of Great Britain in this
place, and throughout the whole of Germany, are perilled
by the continuance in office of the present French envoy;
this man is of a character so infamous that he will stick
at no falsehood, or hesitate at no crime, to attain his
ends.  He poisons the mind of the Court against the
English minister, represents the conduct of Great Britain in
the most odious and atrocious light, and is unhappily
backed by a minister whose ignorance and necessities
are as notorious as his influence is fatal." On their side
they would.say, "M.  de Tapeworm continues his
system of stupid insular arrogance and vulgar falsehood
against the greatest nation in the world.  Yesterday he
was heard to speak lightly of Her Royal Highness Madame
the Duchess of Berri; on a former occasion he insulted
the heroic Duke of Angouleme and dared to insinuate
that H.R.H.  the Duke of Orleans was conspiring against
the august throne of the lilies.  His gold is prodigated in
every direction which his stupid menaces fail to frighten.
By one and the other, he has won over creatures of the
Court here--and, in fine, Pumpernickel will not be
quiet, Germany tranquil, France respected, or Europe
content until this poisonous viper be crushed under
heel":  and so on.  When one side or the other had written
any particularly spicy dispatch, news of it was sure to
slip out.

Before the winter was far advanced, it is actually on
record that Emmy took a night and received company
with great propriety and modesty.  She had a French
master, who complimented her upon the purity of her
accent and her facility of learning; the fact is she had
learned long ago and grounded herself subsequently in the
grammar so as to be able to teach it to George; and Madam
Strumpff came to give her lessons in singing, which she
performed so well and with such a true voice that the
Major's windows, who had lodgings opposite under the
Prime Minister, were always open to hear the lesson.
Some of the German ladies, who are very sentimental and
simple in their tastes, fell in love with her and began to
call her du at once.  These are trivial details, but they
relate to happy times.  The Major made himself George's
tutor and read Caesar and mathematics with him, and
they had a German master and rode out of evenings by
the side of Emmy's carriage--she was always too timid,
and made a dreadful outcry at the slightest disturbance
on horse-back.  So she drove about with one of her dear
German friends, and Jos asleep on the back-seat of the
barouche.

He was becoming very sweet upon the Grafinn Fanny
de Butterbrod, a very gentle tender-hearted and
unassuming young creature, a Canoness and Countess in her
own right, but with scarcely ten pounds per year to her
fortune, and Fanny for her part declared that to be
Amelia's sister was the greatest delight that Heaven could
bestow on her, and Jos might have put a Countess's shield
and coronet by the side of his own arms on his carriage
and forks; when--when events occurred, and those
grand fetes given upon the marriage of the Hereditary
Prince of Pumpernickel with the lovely Princess Amelia
of Humbourg-Schlippenschloppen took place.

At this festival the magnificence displayed was such as
had not been known in the little German place since
the days of the prodigal Victor XIV.  All the neighbouring
Princes, Princesses, and Grandees were invited to the
feast.  Beds rose to half a crown per night in Pumpernickel,
and the Army was exhausted in providing guards
of honour for the Highnesses, Serenities, and Excellencies
who arrived from all quarters.  The Princess was married
by proxy, at her father's residence, by the Count de
Schlusselback.  Snuff-boxes were given away in profusion
(as we learned from the Court jeweller, who sold
and afterwards bought them again), and bushels of the
Order of Saint Michael of Pumpernickel were sent to
the nobles of the Court, while hampers of the cordons
and decorations of the Wheel of St.  Catherine of
Schlippenschloppen were brought to ours.  The French envoy
got both.  "He is covered with ribbons like a prize
cart-horse," Tapeworm said, who was not allowed by the rules
of his service to take any decorations:  "Let him have
the cordons; but with whom is the victory?" The fact is,
it was a triumph of British diplomacy, the French party
having proposed and tried their utmost to carry a
marriage with a Princess of the House of
Potztausend-Donnerwetter, whom, as a matter of
course, we opposed.

Everybody was asked to the fetes of the marriage.
Garlands and triumphal arches were hung across the road
to welcome the young bride.  The great Saint Michael's
Fountain ran with uncommonly sour wine, while that
in the Artillery Place frothed with beer.  The great waters
played; and poles were put up in the park and gardens
for the happy peasantry, which they might climb at
their leisure, carrying off watches, silver forks, prize
sausages hung with pink ribbon, &c., at the top.  Georgy
got one, wrenching it off, having swarmed up the pole to
the delight of the spectators, and sliding down with the
rapidity of a fall of water.  But it was for the glory's
sake merely.  The boy gave the sausage to a peasant,
who had very nearly seized it, and stood at the foot of
the mast, blubbering, because he was unsuccessful.

At the French Chancellerie they had six more lampions
in their illumination than ours had; but our transparency,
which represented the young Couple advancing and
Discord flying away, with the most ludicrous likeness to the
French Ambassador, beat the French picture hollow; and
I have no doubt got Tapeworm the advancement and the
Cross of the Bath which he subsequently attained.

Crowds of foreigners arrived for the fetes, and of
English, of course.  Besides the Court balls, public balls
were given at the Town Hall and the Redoute, and in the
former place there was a room for trente-et-quarante
and roulette established, for the week of the festivities
only, and by one of the great German companies from
Ems or Aix-la-Chapelle.  The officers or inhabitants of the
town were not allowed to play at these games, but
strangers, peasants, ladies were admitted, and any one
who chose to lose or win money.

That little scapegrace Georgy Osborne amongst others,
whose pockets were always full of dollars and whose
relations were away at the grand festival of the Court,
came to the Stadthaus Ball in company of his uncle's
courier, Mr. Kirsch, and having only peeped into a
play-room at Baden-Baden when he hung on Dobbin's arm,
and where, of course, he was not permitted to gamble, came
eagerly to this part of the entertainment and hankered
round the tables where the croupiers and the punters
were at work.  Women were playing; they were masked,
some of them; this license was allowed in these wild times
of carnival.

A woman with light hair, in a low dress by no means
so fresh as it had been, and with a black mask on,
through the eyelets of which her eyes twinkled strangely,
was seated at one of the roulette-tables with a card and
a pin and a couple of florins before her.  As the croupier
called out the colour and number, she pricked on the
card with great care and regularity, and only ventured her
money on the colours after the red or black had come
up a certain number of times.  It was strange to look at
her.

But in spite of her care and assiduity she guessed
wrong and the last two florins followed each other under
the croupier's rake, as he cried out with his inexorable
voice the winning colour and number.  She gave a sigh, a
shrug with her shoulders, which were already too much
out of her gown, and dashing the pin through the card
on to the table, sat thrumming it for a while.  Then she
looked round her and saw Georgy's honest face staring
at the scene.  The little scamp!  What business had he
to be there?

When she saw the boy, at whose face she looked hard
through her shining eyes and mask, she said, "Monsieur
n'est pas joueur?"

"Non, Madame," said the boy; but she must have
known, from his accent, of what country he was, for she
answered him with a slight foreign tone.  "You have
nevare played--will you do me a littl' favor?"

"What is it?" said Georgy, blushing again.  Mr. Kirsch
was at work for his part at the rouge et noir and did not
see his young master.

"Play this for me, if you please; put it on any number,
any number." And she took from her bosom a purse, and
out of it a gold piece, the only coin there, and she put it
into George's hand.  The boy laughed and did as he was
bid.

The number came up sure enough.  There is a power
that arranges that, they say, for beginners.

"Thank you," said she, pulling the money towards her,
"thank you.  What is your name?"

"My name's Osborne," said Georgy, and was fingering
in his own pockets for dollars, and just about to make a
trial, when the Major, in his uniform, and Jos, en Marquis,
from the Court ball, made their appearance.  Other
people, finding the entertainment stupid and preferring the
fun at the Stadthaus, had quitted the Palace ball earlier;
but it is probable the Major and Jos had gone home and
found the boy's absence, for the former instantly went
up to him and, taking him by the shoulder, pulled him
briskly back from the place of temptation.  Then, looking
round the room, he saw Kirsch employed as we have
said, and going up to him, asked how he dared to bring
Mr. George to such a place.

"Laissez-moi tranquille," said Mr. Kirsch, very much
excited by play and wine.  "ll faut s'amuser, parbleu.
Je ne suis pas au service de Monsieur."

Seeing his condition the Major did not choose to argue
with the man, but contented himself with drawing away
George and asking Jos if he would come away.  He was
standing close by the lady in the mask, who was playing
with pretty good luck now, and looking on much
interested at the game.

"Hadn't you better come, Jos," the Major said, "with
George and me?"

"I'll stop and go home with that rascal, Kirsch," Jos
said; and for the same reason of modesty, which he
thought ought to be preserved before the boy, Dobbin
did not care to remonstrate with Jos, but left him and
walked home with Georgy.

"Did you play?" asked the Major when they were out
and on their way home.

The boy said "No."

"Give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you
never will."

"Why?" said the boy; "it seems very good fun." And, in
a very eloquent and impressive manner, the Major showed
him why he shouldn't, and would have enforced his
precepts by the example of Georgy's own father, had he
liked to say anything that should reflect on the other's
memory.  When he had housed him, he went to bed and
saw his light, in the little room outside of Amelia's,
presently disappear.  Amelia's followed half an hour
afterwards.  I don't know what made the Major note it
so accurately.

Jos, however, remained behind over the play-table; he
was no gambler, but not averse to the little excitement
of the sport now and then, and he had some Napoleons
chinking in the embroidered pockets of his court
waistcoat.  He put down one over the fair shoulder of the
little gambler before him, and they won.  She made a little
movement to make room for him by her side, and
just took the skirt of her gown from a vacant chair there.

"Come and give me good luck," she said, still in a
foreign accent, quite different from that frank and
perfectly English "Thank you," with which she had saluted
Georgy's coup in her favour.  The portly gentleman,
looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him,
sat down; he muttered--"Ah, really, well now, God bless
my soul.  I'm very fortunate; I'm sure to give you good
fortune," and other words of compliment and confusion.
"Do you play much?" the foreign mask said.

"I put a Nap or two down," said Jos with a superb air,
flinging down a gold piece.

"Yes; ay nap after dinner," said the mask archly.  But
Jos looking frightened, she continued, in her pretty
French accent, "You do not play to win.  No more do I.
I play to forget, but I cannot.  I cannot forget old times,
monsieur.  Your little nephew is the image of his father;
and you--you are not changed--but yes, you are.
Everybody changes, everybody forgets; nobody has
any heart."

"Good God, who is it?" asked Jos in a flutter.

"Can't you guess, Joseph Sedley?" said the little
woman in a sad voice, and undoing her mask, she
looked at him.  "You have forgotten me."

"Good heavens!  Mrs. Crawley!" gasped out Jos.

"Rebecca," said the other, putting her hand on his;
but she followed the game still, all the time she was
looking at him.

"I am stopping at the Elephant," she continued.  "Ask
for Madame de Raudon.  I saw my dear Amelia to-day;
how pretty she looked, and how happy!  So do you!
Everybody but me, who am wretched, Joseph Sedley."
And she put her money over from the red to the black,
as if by a chance movement of her hand, and while she
was wiping her eyes with a pocket-handkerchief fringed
with torn lace.

The red came up again, and she lost the whole of that
stake.~ "Come away," she said.  "Come with me a little
--we are old friends, are we not, dear Mr. Sedley?"

And Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this
time, followed his master out into the moonlight, where
the illuminations were winking out and the transparency
over our mission was scarcely visible.




CHAPTER LXIV


A Vagabond Chapter

We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's
biography with that lightness and delicacy which the
world demands--the moral world, that has, perhaps, no
particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance
to hearing vice called by its proper name.  There
are things we do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair,
though we never speak of them:  as the Ahrimanians
worship the devil, but don't mention him:  and a polite
public will no more bear to read an authentic description
of vice than a truly refined English or American female
will permit the word breeches to be pronounced in her
chaste hearing.  And yet, madam, both are walking the
world before our faces every day, without much shocking
us.  If you were to blush every time they went by, what
complexions you would have!  It is only when their
naughty names are called out that your modesty has any
occasion to show alarm or sense of outrage, and it has
been the wish of the present writer, all through this story,
deferentially to submit to the fashion at present prevailing,
and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a
light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine
feelings may be offended.  I defy any one to say that
our Becky, who has certainly some vices, has not been
presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and
inoffensive manner.  In describing this Siren, singing and
smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride,
asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the
laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail
above water? No!  Those who like may peep down under
waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and
twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst
bones, or curling round corpses; but above the waterline,
I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable,
and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist
in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however, the Siren
disappears and dives below, down among the dead men,
the water of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour
lost to look into it ever so curiously.  They look pretty
enough when they sit upon a rock, twanging their harps
and combing their hair, and sing, and beckon to you to
come and hold the looking-glass; but when they sink
into their native element, depend on it, those mermaids
are about no good, and we had best not examine the
fiendish marine cannibals, revelling and feasting on their
wretched pickled victims.  And so, when Becky is out of
the way, be sure that she is not particularly well
employed, and that the less that is said about her doings
is in fact the better.

If we were to give a full account of her proceedings
during a couple of years that followed after the Curzon
Street catastrophe, there might be some reason for
people to say this book was improper.  The actions of very
vain, heartless, pleasure-seeking people are very often
improper (as are many of yours, my friend with the
grave face and spotless reputation--but that is merely
by the way); and what are those of a woman without
faith--or love--or character? And I am inclined to think
that there was a period in Mrs Becky's life when
she was seized, not by remorse, but by a kind of despair,
and absolutely neglected her person and did not even
care for her reputation.

This abattement and degradation did not take place
all at once; it was brought about by degrees, after her
calamity, and after many struggles to keep up--as a
man who goes overboard hangs on to a spar whilst any
hope is left, and then flings it away and goes down, when
he finds that struggling is in vain.

She lingered about London whilst her husband was
making preparations for his departure to his seat of
government, and it is believed made more than one
attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, and to
work upon his feelings, which she had almost
enlisted in her favour.  As Sir Pitt and Mr. Wenham were
walking down to the House of Commons, the latter spied
Mrs. Rawdon in a black veil, and lurking near the palace
of the legislature.  She sneaked away when her eyes met
those of Wenham, and indeed never succeeded in her
designs upon the Baronet.

Probably Lady Jane interposed.  I have heard that she
quite astonished her husband by the spirit which she
exhibited in this quarrel, and her determination to disown
Mrs. Becky.  Of her own movement, she invited Rawdon
to come and stop in Gaunt Street until his departure for
Coventry Island, knowing that with him for a guard Mrs.
Becky would not try to force her door; and she looked
curiously at the superscriptions of all the letters which
arrived for Sir Pitt, lest he and his sister-in-law should
be corresponding.  Not but that Rebecca could have
written had she a mind, but she did not try to see or to write
to Pitt at his own house, and after one or two attempts
consented to his demand that the correspondence
regarding her conjugal differences should be carried on by
lawyers only.

The fact was that Pitt's mind had been poisoned against
her.  A short time after Lord Steyne's accident Wenham
had been with the Baronet and given him such a biography
of Mrs. Becky as had astonished the member for
Queen's Crawley.  He knew everything regarding her:
who her father was; in what year her mother danced at
the opera; what had been her previous history; and what
her conduct during her married life--as I have no doubt
that the greater part of the story was false and
dictated by interested malevolence, it shall not be repeated
here.  But Becky was left with a sad sad reputation in the
esteem of a country gentleman and relative who had
been once rather partial to her.

The revenues of the Governor of Coventry Island are
not large.  A part of them were set aside by his Excellency
for the payment of certain outstanding debts and
liabilities, the charges incident on his high situation
required considerable expense; finally, it was found that
he could not spare to his wife more than three hundred
pounds a year, which he proposed to pay to her on
an undertaking that she would never trouble him.
Otherwise, scandal, separation, Doctors' Commons would
ensue.  But it was Mr. Wenham's business, Lord Steyne's
business, Rawdon's, everybody's--to get her out of the
country, and hush up a most disagreeable affair.

She was probably so much occupied in arranging these
affairs of business with her husband's lawyers that she
forgot to take any step whatever about her son, the little
Rawdon, and did not even once propose to go and see
him.  That young gentleman was consigned to the entire
guardianship of his aunt and uncle, the former of whom
had always possessed a great share of the child's
affection.  His mamma wrote him a neat letter from Boulogne,
when she quitted England, in which she requested him to
mind his book, and said she was going to take a
Continental tour, during which she would have the pleasure
of writing to him again.  But she never did for a year
afterwards, and not, indeed, until Sir Pitt's only boy,
always sickly, died of hooping-cough and measles--then
Rawdon's mamma wrote the most affectionate composition
to her darling son, who was made heir of Queen's
Crawley by this accident, and drawn more closely than
ever to the kind lady, whose tender heart had already
adopted him.  Rawdon Crawley, then grown a tall, fine
lad, blushed when he got the letter.  "Oh, Aunt Jane, you
are my mother!" he said; "and not--and not that one."
But he wrote back a kind and respectful letter to Mrs.
Rebecca, then living at a boarding-house at Florence.
But we are advancing matters.

Our darling Becky's first flight was not very far.  She
perched upon the French coast at Boulogne, that refuge
of so much exiled English innocence, and there lived in
rather a genteel, widowed manner, with a femme de
chambre and a couple of rooms, at an hotel.  She dined
at the table d'hote, where people thought her very pleasant,
and where she entertained her neighbours by stories
of her brother, Sir Pitt, and her great London acquaintance,
talking that easy, fashionable slip-slop which has
so much effect upon certain folks of small breeding.  She
passed with many of them for a person of importance;
she gave little tea-parties in her private room and shared
in the innocent amusements of the place in sea-bathing,
and in jaunts in open carriages, in strolls on the sands,
and in visits to the play.  Mrs. Burjoice, the printer's
lady, who was boarding with her family at the hotel for
the summer, and to whom her Burjoice came of a
Saturday and Sunday, voted her charming, until that little
rogue of a Burjoice began to pay her too much
attention.  But there was nothing in the story, only that
Becky was always affable, easy, and good-natured--and
with men especially.

Numbers of people were going abroad as usual at the
end of the season, and Becky had plenty of opportunities
of finding out by the behaviour of her acquaintances of
the great London world the opinion of "society" as
regarded her conduct.  One day it was Lady Partlet and her
daughters whom Becky confronted as she was walking
modestly on Boulogne pier, the cliffs of Albion shining
in the distance across the deep blue sea.  Lady Partlet
marshalled all her daughters round her with a sweep of
her parasol and retreated from the pier, darting savage
glances at poor little Becky who stood alone there.

On another day the packet came in.  It had been
blowing fresh, and it always suited Becky's humour to
see the droll woe-begone faces of the people as they
emerged from the boat.  Lady Slingstone happened to be
on board this day.  Her ladyship had been exceedingly ill
in her carriage, and was greatly exhausted and scarcely
fit to walk up the plank from the ship to the pier.  But
all her energies rallied the instant she saw Becky smiling
roguishly under a pink bonnet, and giving her a
glance of scorn such as would have shrivelled up most
women, she walked into the Custom House quite
unsupported.  Becky only laughed:  but I don't think she liked
it.  She felt she was alone, quite alone, and the far-off
shining cliffs of England were impassable to her.

The behaviour of the men had undergone too I don't
know what change.  Grinstone showed his teeth and
laughed in her face with a familiarity that was not pleasant.
Little Bob Suckling, who was cap in hand to her
three months before, and would walk a mile in the rain
to see for her carriage in the line at Gaunt House, was
talking to Fitzoof of the Guards (Lord Heehaw's son)
one day upon the jetty, as Becky took her walk there.
Little Bobby nodded to her over his shoulder, without
moving his hat, and continued his conversation with the
heir of Heehaw.  Tom Raikes tried to walk into her
sitting-room at the inn with a cigar in his mouth, but she
closed the door upon him, and would have locked it,
only that his fingers were inside.  She began to feel that
she was very lonely indeed.  "If HE'D been here," she said,
"those cowards would never have dared to insult me."
She thought about "him" with great sadness and
perhaps longing--about his honest, stupid, constant kindness
and fidelity; his never-ceasing obedience; his good
humour; his bravery and courage.  Very likely she cried,
for she was particularly lively, and had put on a little
extra rouge, when she came down to dinner.

She rouged regularly now; and--and her maid got
Cognac for her besides that which was charged in the
hotel bill.

Perhaps the insults of the men were not, however, so
intolerable to her as the sympathy of certain women.
Mrs. Crackenbury and Mrs. Washington White passed
through Boulogne on their way to Switzerland.  ~The party
were protected by Colonel Horner, young Beaumoris, and
of course old Crackenbury, and Mrs. White's little girl.)
THEY did not avoid her.  They giggled, cackled, tattled,
condoled, consoled, and patronized her until they drove
her almost wild with rage.  To be patronized by THEM!
she thought, as they went away simpering after kissing
her.  And she heard Beaumoris's laugh ringing on the
stair and knew quite well how to interpret his hilarity.

It was after this visit that Becky, who had paid her
weekly bills, Becky who had made herself agreeable to
everybody in the house, who smiled at the landlady,
called the waiters "monsieur," and paid the chambermaids
in politeness and apologies, what far more than
compensated for a little niggardliness in point of money
(of which Becky never was free), that Becky, we say,
received a notice to quit from the landlord, who had
been told by some one that she was quite an unfit
person to have at his hotel, where English ladies would not
sit down with her.  And she was forced to fly into lodgings
of which the dulness and solitude were most wearisome
to her.

Still she held up, in spite of these rebuffs, and tried to
make a character for herself and conquer scandal.  She
went to church very regularly and sang louder than
anybody there.  She took up the cause of the widows of the
shipwrecked fishermen, and gave work and drawings for
the Quashyboo Mission; she subscribed to the Assembly
and WOULDN'T waltz.  In a word, she did everything that
was respectable, and that is why we dwell upon this
part of her career with more fondness than upon
subsequent parts of her history, which are not so pleasant.
She saw people avoiding her, and still laboriously smiled
upon them; you never could suppose from her
countenance what pangs of humiliation she might be
enduring inwardly.

Her history was after all a mystery.  Parties were
divided about her.  Some people who took the trouble to
busy themselves in the matter said that she was the
criminal, whilst others vowed that she was as innocent
as a lamb and that her odious husband was in fault.
She won over a good many by bursting into tears
about her boy and exhibiting the most frantic grief
when his name was mentioned, or she saw anybody like
him.  She gained good Mrs. Alderney's heart in that way,
who was rather the Queen of British Boulogne and gave
the most dinners and balls of all the residents there, by
weeping when Master Alderney came from Dr. Swishtail's
academy to pass his holidays with his mother.  "He and
her Rawdon were of the same age, and so like," Becky
said in a voice choking with agony; whereas there was
five years' difference between the boys' ages, and no
more likeness between them than between my respected
reader and his humble servant.  Wenham, when he was
going abroad, on his way to Kissingen to join Lord
Steyne, enlightened Mrs. Alderney on this point and told
her how he was much more able to describe little
Rawdon than his mamma, who notoriously hated him and
never saw him; how he was thirteen years old, while
little Alderney was but nine, fair, while the other darling
was dark--in a word, caused the lady in question to
repent of her good humour.

Whenever Becky made a little circle for herself with
incredible toils and labour, somebody came and swept it
down rudely, and she had all her work to begin over
again.  It was very hard; very hard; lonely and
disheartening.

There was Mrs. Newbright, who took her up for some
time, attracted by the sweetness of her singing at church
and by her proper views upon serious subjects, concerning
which in former days, at Queen's Crawley, Mrs.
Becky had had a good deal of instruction.  Well, she not
only took tracts, but she read them.  She worked flannel
petticoats for the Quashyboos--cotton night-caps for the
Cocoanut Indians--painted handscreens for the
conversion of the Pope and the Jews--sat under Mr. Rowls
on Wednesdays, Mr. Huggleton on Thursdays, attended
two Sunday services at church, besides Mr. Bawler, the
Darbyite, in the evening, and all in vain.  Mrs. Newbright
had occasion to correspond with the Countess of Southdown
about the Warmingpan Fund for the Fiji
Islanders (for the management of which admirable
charity both these ladies formed part of a female committee),
and having mentioned her "sweet friend," Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley, the Dowager Countess wrote back such a
letter regarding Becky, with such particulars, hints, facts,
falsehoods, and general comminations, that intimacy
between Mrs. Newbright and Mrs. Crawley ceased forthwith,
and all the serious world of Tours, where this misfortune
took place, immediately parted company with the
reprobate.  Those who know the English Colonies abroad
know that we carry with us us our pride, pills, prejudices,
Harvey-sauces, cayenne-peppers, and other Lares,
making a little Britain wherever we settle down.

From one colony to another Becky fled uneasily.  From
Boulogne to Dieppe, from Dieppe to Caen, from Caen
to Tours--trying with all her might to be respectable,
and alas!  always found out some day or other and
pecked out of the cage by the real daws.

Mrs. Hook Eagles took her up at one of these places--
a woman without a blemish in her character and a house
in Portman Square.  She was staying at the hotel at Dieppe,
whither Becky fled, and they made each other's acquaintance
first at sea, where they were swimming together,
and subsequently at the table d'hote of the hotel.  Mrs
Eagles had heard--who indeed had not?--some of the
scandal of the Steyne affair; but after a conversation
with Becky, she pronounced that Mrs. Crawley was an
angel, her husband a ruffian, Lord Steyne an
unprincipled wretch, as everybody knew, and the whole case
against Mrs. Crawley an infamous and wicked conspiracy
of that rascal Wenham.  "If you were a man of
any spirit, Mr. Eagles, you would box the wretch's ears
the next time you see him at the Club," she said to her
husband.  But Eagles was only a quiet old gentleman,
husband to Mrs. Eagles, with a taste for geology, and not tall
enough to reach anybody's ears.

The Eagles then patronized Mrs. Rawdon, took her to
live with her at her own house at Paris, quarrelled with
the ambassador's wife because she would not receive her
protegee, and did all that lay in woman's power to keep
Becky straight in the paths of virtue and good repute.

Becky was very respectable and orderly at first, but
the life of humdrum virtue grew utterly tedious to her
before long.  It was the same routine every day, the same
dulness and comfort, the same drive over the same
stupid Bois de Boulogne, the same company of an
evening, the same Blair's Sermon of a Sunday night--the
same opera always being acted over and over again;
Becky was dying of weariness, when, luckily for her,
young Mr. Eagles came from Cambridge, and his mother,
seeing the impression which her little friend made upon
him, straightway gave Becky warning.

Then she tried keeping house with a female friend;
then the double menage began to quarrel and get into
debt.  Then she determined upon a boarding-house existence
and lived for some time at that famous mansion
kept by Madame de Saint Amour, in the Rue Royale, at
Paris, where she began exercising her graces and
fascinations upon the shabby dandies and fly-blown beauties
who frequented her landlady's salons.  Becky loved
society and, indeed, could no more exist without it than an
opium-eater without his dram, and she was happy
enough at the period of her boarding-house life.  "The
women here are as amusing as those in May Fair," she
told an old London friend who met her, "only, their
dresses are not quite so fresh.  The men wear cleaned
gloves, and are sad rogues, certainly, but they are not
worse than Jack This and Tom That.  The mistress of the
house is a little vulgar, but I don't think she is so vulgar
as Lady --" and here she named the name of a
great leader of fashion that I would die rather than
reveal.  In fact, when you saw Madame de Saint Amour's
rooms lighted up of a night, men with plaques and
cordons at the ecarte tables, and the women at a little
distance, you might fancy yourself for a while in good
society, and that Madame was a real Countess.  Many
people did so fancy, and Becky was for a while one of the
most dashing ladies of the Countess's salons.

But it is probable that her old creditors of 1815 found
her out and caused her to leave Paris, for the poor little
woman was forced to fly from the city rather suddenly,
and went thence to Brussels.

How well she remembered the place!  She grinned as
she looked up at the little entresol which she had
occupied, and thought of the Bareacres family, bawling
for horses and flight, as their carriage stood in the
porte-cochere of the hotel.  She went to Waterloo and to
Laeken, where George Osborne's monument much
struck her.  She made a little sketch of it.  "That poor
Cupid!" she said; "how dreadfully he was in love with
me, and what a fool he was!  I wonder whether little
Emmy is alive.  It was a good little creature; and that
fat brother of hers.  I have his funny fat picture still
among my papers.  They were kind simple people."

At Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame
de Saint Amour to her friend, Madame la Comtesse de
Borodino, widow of Napoleon's General, the famous
Count de Borodino, who was left with no resource by the
deceased hero but that of a table d'hote and an ecarte
table.  Second-rate dandies and roues, widow-ladies who
always have a lawsuit, and very simple English folks, who
fancy they see "Continental society" at these houses, put
down their money, or ate their meals, at Madame de
Borodino's tables.  The gallant young fellows treated the
company round to champagne at the table d'hote, rode
out with the women, or hired horses on country excursions,
clubbed money to take boxes at the play or the
opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the
ecarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in
Devonshire about their felicitous introduction to foreign
society.

Here, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding-house queen,
and ruled in select pensions.  She never refused the
champagne, or the bouquets, or the drives into the country,
or the private boxes; but what she preferred was the
ecarte at night,--and she played audaciously.  First she
played only for a little, then for five-franc pieces, then for
Napoleons, then for notes:  then she would not be able
to pay her month's pension:  then she borrowed from
the young gentlemen:  then she got into cash again and
bullied Madame de Borodino, whom she had coaxed and
wheedled before:  then she was playing for ten sous at a
time, and in a dire state of poverty:  then her quarter's
allowance would come in, and she would pay off Madame
de Borodino's score and would once more take the
cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier de
Raff.

When Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is that she
owed three months' pension to Madame de Borodino, of
which fact, and of the gambling, and of the drinking, and
of the going down on her knees to the Reverend Mr.
Muff, Ministre Anglican, and borrowing money of him,
and of her coaxing and flirting with Milor Noodle, son of
Sir Noodle, pupil of the Rev.  Mr. Muff, whom she used
to take into her private room, and of whom she won
large sums at ecarte--of which fact, I say, and of a
hundred of her other knaveries, the Countess de
Borodino informs every English person who stops at her
establishment, and announces that Madame Rawdon was
no better than a vipere.

So our little wanderer went about setting up her tent
in various cities of Europe, as restless as Ulysses or
Bampfylde Moore Carew.  Her taste for disrespectability
grew more and more remarkable.  She became a perfect
Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would
make your hair stand on end to meet.

There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its
little colony of English raffs--men whose names Mr.
Hemp the officer reads out periodically at the Sheriffs'
Court--young gentlemen of very good family often, only
that the latter disowns them; frequenters of billiard-
rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and
gaming-tables.  They people the debtors' prisons--they
drink and swagger--they fight and brawl--they run away
without paying--they have duels with French and German
officers--they cheat Mr. Spooney at ecarte--they get
the money and drive off to Baden in magnificent britzkas
--they try their infallible martingale and lurk about the
tables with empty pockets, shabby bullies, penniless
bucks, until they can swindle a Jew banker with a sham
bill of exchange, or find another Mr. Spooney to rob.
The alternations of splendour and misery which these
people undergo are very queer to view.  Their life must
be one of great excitement.  Becky--must it be owned?--
took to this life, and took to it not unkindly.  She went
about from town to town among these Bohemians.  The
lucky Mrs. Rawdon was known at every play-table in
Germany.  She and Madame de Cruchecassee kept house at
Florence together.  It is said she was ordered out of
Munich, and my friend Mr. Frederick Pigeon avers that it
was at her house at Lausanne that he was hocussed at
supper and lost eight hundred pounds to Major Loder
and the Honourable Mr. Deuceace.  We are bound, you
see, to give some account of Becky's biography, but of
this part, the less, perhaps, that is said the better.

They say that, when Mrs. Crawley was particularly
down on her luck, she gave concerts and lessons in music
here and there.  There was a Madame de Raudon, who
certainly had a matinee musicale at Wildbad,
accompanied by Herr Spoff, premier pianist to the Hospodar of
Wallachia, and my little friend Mr. Eaves, who knew
everybody and had travelled everywhere, always used to
declare that he was at Strasburg in the year 1830, when a
certain Madame Rebecque made her appearance in the
opera of the Dame Blanche, giving occasion to a furious
row in the theatre there.  She was hissed off the stage by
the audience, partly from her own incompetency, but
chiefly from the ill-advised sympathy of some persons in
the parquet, (where the officers of the garrison had their
admissions); and Eaves was certain that the unfortunate
debutante in question was no other than Mrs.
Rawdon Crawley.

She was, in fact, no better than a vagabond upon this
earth.  When she got her money she gambled; when she
had gambled it she was put to shifts to live; who knows
how or by what means she succeeded? It is said that she
was once seen at St.  Petersburg, but was summarily
dismissed from that capital by the police, so that there
cannot be any possibility of truth in the report that she was
a Russian spy at Toplitz and Vienna afterwards.  I have
even been informed that at Paris she discovered a
relation of her own, no less a person than her maternal
grandmother, who was not by any means a
Montmorenci, but a hideous old box-opener at a theatre on
the Boulevards.  The meeting between them, of which
other persons, as it is hinted elsewhere, seem to have
been acquainted, must have been a very affecting
interview.  The present historian can give no certain details
regarding the event.

It happened at Rome once that Mrs. de Rawdon's half-
year's salary had just been paid into the principal
banker's there, and, as everybody who had a balance of
above five hundred scudi was invited to the balls which
this prince of merchants gave during the winter, Becky
had the honour of a card, and appeared at one of the
Prince and Princess Polonia's splendid evening entertainments.
The Princess was of the family of Pompili, lineally
descended from the second king of Rome, and Egeria
of the house of Olympus, while the Prince's grandfather,
Alessandro Polonia, sold wash-balls, essences,
tobacco, and pocket-handkerchiefs, ran errands for
gentlemen, and lent money in a small way.  All the great
company in Rome thronged to his saloons--Princes,
Dukes, Ambassadors, artists, fiddlers, monsignori, young
bears with their leaders--every rank and condition of
man.  His halls blazed with light and magnificence; were
resplendent with gilt frames (containing pictures), and
dubious antiques; and the enormous gilt crown and arms
of the princely owner, a gold mushroom on a crimson
field (the colour of the pocket-handkerchiefs which he
sold), and the silver fountain of the Pompili family shone
all over the roof, doors, and panels of the house, and
over the grand velvet baldaquins prepared to receive
Popes and Emperors.

So Becky, who had arrived in the diligence from
Florence, and was lodged at an inn in a very modest way,
got a card for Prince Polonia's entertainment, and her
maid dressed her with unusual care, and she went to this
fine ball leaning on the arm of Major Loder, with whom
she happened to be travelling at the time--(the same
man who shot Prince Ravoli at Naples the next year, and
was caned by Sir John Buckskin for carrying four kings
in his hat besides those which he used in playing at
ecarte )--and this pair went into the rooms together,
and Becky saw a number of old faces which she
remembered in happier days, when she was not innocent,
but not found out.  Major Loder knew a great number
of foreigners, keen-looking whiskered men with dirty
striped ribbons in their buttonholes, and a very small
display of linen; but his own countrymen, it might be
remarked, eschewed the Major.  Becky, too, knew some
ladies here and there--French widows, dubious Italian
countesses, whose husbands had treated them ill--faugh
--what shall we say, we who have moved among
some of the finest company of Vanity Fair, of this refuse
and sediment of rascals? If we play, let it be with clean
cards, and not with this dirty pack.  But every man who
has formed one of the innumerable army of travellers
has seen these marauding irregulars hanging on, like
Nym and Pistol, to the main force, wearing the king's
colours and boasting of his commission, but pillaging
for themselves, and occasionally gibbeted by the roadside.

Well, she was hanging on the arm of Major Loder,
and they went through the rooms together, and drank a
great quantity of champagne at the buffet, where the
people, and especially the Major's irregular corps,
struggled furiously for refreshments, of which when the
pair had had enough, they pushed on until they reached
the Duchess's own pink velvet saloon, at the end of the
suite of apartments (where the statue of the Venus is,
and the great Venice looking-glasses, framed in silver),
and where the princely family were entertaining their
most distinguished guests at a round table at supper.  It
was just such a little select banquet as that of which
Becky recollected that she had partaken at Lord Steyne's
--and there he sat at Polonia's table, and she saw him.
The scar cut by the diamond on his white, bald,
shining forehead made a burning red mark; his red whiskers
were dyed of a purple hue, which made his pale face
look still paler.  He wore his collar and orders, his blue
ribbon and garter.  He was a greater Prince than any
there, though there was a reigning Duke and a Royal
Highness, with their princesses, and near his Lordship
was seated the beautiful Countess of Belladonna, nee
de Glandier, whose husband (the Count Paolo della
Belladonna), so well known for his brilliant entomological
collections, had been long absent on a mission to the
Emperor of Morocco.

When Becky beheld that familiar and illustrious face,
how vulgar all of a sudden did Major Loder appear to
her, and how that odious Captain Rook did smell of
tobacco!  In one instant she reassumed her fine-ladyship
and tried to look and feel as if she were in May Fair
once more.  "That woman looks stupid and ill-humoured,"
she thought; "I am sure she can't amuse him.  No, he must
be bored by her--he never was by me." A hundred such
touching hopes, fears, and memories palpitated in her
little heart, as she looked with her brightest eyes (the
rouge which she wore up to her eyelids made them
twinkle) towards the great nobleman.  Of a Star and Garter
night Lord Steyne used also to put on his grandest
manner and to look and speak like a great prince, as he was.
Becky admired him smiling sumptuously, easy, lofty, and
stately.  Ah, bon Dieu, what a pleasant companion he
was, what a brilliant wit, what a rich fund of talk, what
a grand manner!--and she had exchanged this for Major
Loder, reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, and
Captain Rook with his horsejockey jokes and prize-ring
slang, and their like.  "I wonder whether he will know
me," she thought.  Lord Steyne was talking and laughing
with a great and illustrious lady at his side, when he
looked up and saw Becky.

She was all over in a flutter as their eyes met, and she
put on the very best smile she could muster, and dropped
him a little, timid, imploring curtsey.  He stared aghast
at her for a minute, as Macbeth might on beholding
Banquo's sudden appearance at his ball-supper, and remained
looking at her with open mouth, when that horrid Major
Loder pulled her away.

"Come away into the supper-room, Mrs. R.," was that
gentleman's remark:  "seeing these nobs grubbing away
has made me peckish too.  Let's go and try the old
governor's champagne." Becky thought the Major had had
a great deal too much already.

The day after she went to walk on the Pincian Hill--
the Hyde Park of the Roman idlers--possibly in hopes to
have another sight of Lord Steyne.  But she met another
acquaintance there:  it was Mr. Fiche, his lordship's
confidential man, who came up nodding to her rather
familiarly and putting a finger to his hat.  "I knew that Madame
was here," he said; "I followed her from her hotel.  I have
some advice to give Madame."

"From the Marquis of Steyne?" Becky asked, resuming
as much of her dignity as she could muster, and not
a little agitated by hope and expectation.

"No," said the valet; "it is from me.  Rome is very
unwholesome."

"Not at this season, Monsieur Fiche--not till after
Easter."

"I tell Madame it is unwholesome now.  There is always
malaria for some people.  That cursed marsh wind kills
many at all seasons.  Look, Madame Crawley, you were
always bon enfant, and I have an interest in you, parole
d'honneur.  Be warned.  Go away from Rome, I tell you--
or you will be ill and die."

Becky laughed, though in rage and fury.  "What!
assassinate poor little me?" she said.  "How romantic!  Does
my lord carry bravos for couriers, and stilettos in the
fourgons? Bah!  I will stay, if but to plague him.  I have
those who will defend me whilst I am here."

It was Monsieur Fiche's turn to laugh now.  "Defend
you," he said, "and who? The Major, the Captain, any
one of those gambling men whom Madame sees would
take her life for a hundred louis.  We know things about
Major Loder (he is no more a Major than I am my Lord
the Marquis) which would send him to the galleys or
worse.  We know everything and have friends everywhere.
We know whom you saw at Paris, and what relations you
found there.  Yes, Madame may stare, but we do.  How
was it that no minister on the Continent would receive
Madame? She has offended somebody:  who never
forgives--whose rage redoubled when he saw you.  He was
like a madman last night when he came home.  Madame
de Belladonna made him a scene about you and fired off
in one of her furies."

"Oh, it was Madame de Belladonna, was it?" Becky
said, relieved a little, for the information she had just got
had scared her.

"No--she does not matter--she is always jealous.  I
tell you it was Monseigneur.  You did wrong to show
yourself to him.  And if you stay here you will repent it.  Mark
my words.  Go.  Here is my lord's carriage"--and seizing
Becky's arm, he rushed down an alley of the garden as
Lord Steyne's barouche, blazing with heraldic devices,
came whirling along the avenue, borne by the almost
priceless horses, and bearing Madame de Belladonna
lolling on the cushions, dark, sulky, and blooming, a King
Charles in her lap, a white parasol swaying over her
head, and old Steyne stretched at her side with a livid
face and ghastly eyes.  Hate, or anger, or desire caused
them to brighten now and then still, but ordinarily, they
gave no light, and seemed tired of looking out on a world
of which almost all the pleasure and all the best beauty
had palled upon the worn-out wicked old man.

"Monseigneur has never recovered the shock of that
night, never," Monsieur Fiche whispered to Mrs. Crawley
as the carriage flashed by, and she peeped out at it
from behind the shrubs that hid her.  "That was a
consolation at any rate," Becky thought.

Whether my lord really had murderous intentions
towards Mrs. Becky as Monsieur Fiche said (since
Monseigneur's death he has returned to his native country,
where he lives much respected, and has purchased from
his Prince the title of Baron Ficci), and the factotum
objected to have to do with assassination; or whether he
simply had a commission to frighten Mrs. Crawley out of
a city where his Lordship proposed to pass the winter,
and the sight of her would be eminently disagreeable to
the great nobleman, is a point which has never been
ascertained:  but the threat had its effect upon the little
woman, and she sought no more to intrude herself upon
the presence of her old patron.

Everybody knows the melancholy end of that
nobleman, which befell at Naples two months after the French
Revolution of 1830; when the Most Honourable George
Gustavus, Marquis of Steyne, Earl of Gaunt and of Gaunt
Castle, in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Hellborough,
Baron Pitchley and Grillsby, a Knight of the Most Noble
Order of the Garter, of the Golden Fleece of Spain, of
the Russian Order of Saint Nicholas of the First Class, of
the Turkish Order of the Crescent, First Lord of the
Powder Closet and Groom of the Back Stairs, Colonel of
the Gaunt or Regent's Own Regiment of Militia, a Trustee
of the British Museum, an Elder Brother of the Trinity
House, a Governor of the White Friars, and D.C.L.--
died after a series of fits brought on, as the papers said,
by the shock occasioned to his lordship's sensibilities by
the downfall of the ancient French monarchy.

An eloquent catalogue appeared in a weekly print,
describing his virtues, his magnificence, his talents, and
his good actions.  His sensibility, his attachment to the
illustrious House of Bourbon, with which he claimed an
alliance, were such that he could not survive the
misfortunes of his august kinsmen.  His body was buried at
Naples, and his heart--that heart which always beat with
every generous and noble emotion was brought back to
Castle Gaunt in a silver urn.  "In him," Mr. Wagg said,
"the poor and the Fine Arts have lost a beneficent patron,
society one of its most brilliant ornaments, and England
one of her loftiest patriots and statesmen," &c., &c.

His will was a good deal disputed, and an attempt was
made to force from Madame de Belladonna the
celebrated jewel called the "Jew's-eye" diamond, which his
lordship always wore on his forefinger, and which it was
said that she removed from it after his lamented demise.
But his confidential friend and attendant, Monsieur Fiche
proved that the ring had been presented to the said
Madame de Belladonna two days before the Marquis's
death, as were the bank-notes, jewels, Neapolitan and
French bonds, &c., found in his lordship's secretaire and
claimed by his heirs from that injured woman.



CHAPTER LXV


Full of Business and Pleasure

The day after the meeting at the play-table, Jos had
himself arrayed with unusual care and splendour, and
without thinking it necessary to say a word to any
member of his family regarding the occurrences of the previous
night, or asking for their company in his walk, he sallied
forth at an early hour, and was presently seen making
inquiries at the door of the Elephant Hotel.  In consequence
of the fetes the house was full of company, the
tables in the street were already surrounded by persons
smoking and drinking the national small-beer, the public
rooms were in a cloud of smoke, and Mr. Jos having, in
his pompous way, and with his clumsy German, made
inquiries for the person of whom he was in search, was
directed to the very top of the house, above the first-floor
rooms where some travelling pedlars had lived, and were
exhibiting their jewellery and brocades; above the second-
floor apartments occupied by the etat major of the
gambling firm; above the third-floor rooms, tenanted by the
band of renowned Bohemian vaulters and tumblers; and
so on to the little cabins of the roof, where, among
students, bagmen, small tradesmen, and country-folks come
in for the festival, Becky had found a little nest--as dirty
a little refuge as ever beauty lay hid in.

Becky liked the life.  She was at home with everybody
in the place, pedlars, punters, tumblers, students and all.
She was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from father
and mother, who were both Bohemians, by taste and
circumstance; if a lord was not by, she would talk to his
courier with the greatest pleasure; the din, the stir, the
drink, the smoke, the tattle of the Hebrew pedlars, the
solemn, braggart ways of the poor tumblers, the sournois
talk of the gambling-table officials, the songs and swagger
of the students, and the general buzz and hum of
the place had pleased and tickled the little woman, even
when her luck was down and she had not wherewithal to
pay her bill.  How pleasant was all the bustle to her now
that her purse was full of the money which little Georgy
had won for her the night before!

As Jos came creaking and puffing up the final stairs,
and was speechless when he got to the landing, and began
to wipe his face and then to look for No.  92, the room
where he was directed to seek for the person he wanted,
the door of the opposite chamber, No.  90, was open,
and a student, in jack-boots and a dirty schlafrock, was
lying on the bed smoking a long pipe; whilst another
student in long yellow hair and a braided coat, exceeding
smart and dirty too, was actually on his knees at No.  92,
bawling through the keyhole supplications to the person
within.

"Go away," said a well-known voice, which made Jos
thrill, "I expect somebody; I expect my grandpapa.  He
mustn't see you there."

"Angel Englanderinn!" bellowed the kneeling student
with the whity-brown ringlets and the large finger-ring,
"do take compassion upon us.  Make an appointment.
Dine with me and Fritz at the inn in the park.  We will
have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and
French wine.  We shall die if you don't."

"That we will," said the young nobleman on the bed;
and this colloquy Jos overheard, though he did not
comprehend it, for the reason that he had never studied
the language in which it was carried on.

"Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait," Jos said
in his grandest manner, when he was able to speak.

"Quater fang tooce!" said the student, starting up, and
he bounced into his own room, where he locked the door,
and where Jos heard him laughing with his comrade on
the bed.

The gentleman from Bengal was standing, disconcerted
by this incident, when the door of the 92 opened of
itself and Becky's little head peeped out full of archness
and mischief.  She lighted on Jos.  "It's you," she said,
coming out.  "How I have been waiting for you!  Stop!
not yet--in one minute you shall come in." In that instant
she put a rouge-pot, a brandy bottle, and a plate of broken
meat into the bed, gave one smooth to her hair, and
finally let in her visitor.

She had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a
trifle faded and soiled, and marked here and there with
pomaturn; but her arms shone out from the loose sleeves
of the dress very white and fair, and it was tied round
her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim little figure
of the wearer.  She led Jos by the hand into her garret.
"Come in," she said.  "Come and talk to me.  Sit yonder
on the chair"; and she gave the civilian's hand a little
squeeze and laughingly placed him upon it.  As for
herself, she placed herself on the bed--not on the bottle
and plate, you may be sure--on which Jos might have
reposed, had he chosen that seat; and so there she sat
and talked with her old admirer.
  "How little years have changed you," she said with a
look of tender interest.  "I should have known you
anywhere.  What a comfort it is amongst strangers to see
once more the frank honest face of an old friend!"

The frank honest face, to tell the truth, at this
moment bore any expression but one of openness and
honesty:  it was, on the contrary, much perturbed and
puzzled in look.  Jos was surveying the queer little apartment
in which he found his old flame.  One of her gowns hung
over the bed, another depending from a hook of the door;
her bonnet obscured half the looking-glass, on which,
too, lay the prettiest little pair of bronze boots; a French
novel was on the table by the bedside, with a candle, not
of wax.  Becky thought of popping that into the bed too,
but she only put in the little paper night-cap with which
she had put the candle out on going to sleep.

"I should have known you anywhere," she continued;
"a woman never forgets some things.  And you were the
first man I ever--I ever saw."

"Was I really?" said Jos.  "God bless my soul, you--
you don't say so."

"When I came with your sister from Chiswick, I was
scarcely more than a child," Becky said.  "How is that,
dear love? Oh, her husband was a sad wicked man, and
of course it was of me that the poor dear was jealous.
As if I cared about him, heigho!  when there was
somebody--but no--don't let us talk of old times"; and she
passed her handkerchief with the tattered lace across
her eyelids.

"Is not this a strange place," she continued, "for a
woman, who has lived in a very different world too, to be
found in? I have had so many griefs and wrongs, Joseph
Sedley; I have been made to suffer so cruelly that I am
almost made mad sometimes.  I can't stay still in any
place, but wander about always restless and unhappy.
All my friends have been false to me--all.  There is no
such thing as an honest man in the world.  I was the truest
wife that ever lived, though I married my husband out of
pique, because somebody else--but never mind that.  I
was true, and he trampled upon me and deserted me.  I
was the fondest mother.  I had but one child, one darling,
one hope, one joy, which I held to my heart with a mother's
affection, which was my life, my prayer, my--my
blessing; and they--they tore it from me--tore it from
me"; and she put her hand to her heart with a passionate
gesture of despair, burying her face for a moment on the
bed.

The brandy-bottle inside clinked up against the plate
which held the cold sausage.  Both were moved, no doubt,
by the exhibition of so much grief.  Max and Fritz were at
the door, listening with wonder to Mrs. Becky's sobs and
cries.  Jos, too, was a good deal frightened and affected at
seeing his old flame in this condition.  And she began,
forthwith, to tell her story--a tale so neat, simple, and
artless that it was quite evident from hearing her that if
ever there was a white-robed angel escaped from heaven
to be subject to the infernal machinations and villainy of
fiends here below, that spotless being--that miserable
unsullied martyr, was present on the bed before Jos--on
the bed, sitting on the brandy-bottle.

They had a very long, amicable, and confidential talk
there, in the course of which Jos Sedley was somehow
made aware (but in a manner that did not in the least
scare or offend him) that Becky's heart had first learned
to beat at his enchanting presence; that George Osborne
had certainly paid an unjustifiable court to HER, which
might account for Amelia's jealousy and their little
rupture; but that Becky never gave the least encouragement
to the unfortunate officer, and that she had never ceased
to think about Jos from the very first day she had seen
him, though, of course, her duties as a married woman
were paramount--duties which she had always preserved,
and would, to her dying day, or until the proverbially bad
climate in which Colonel Crawley was living should
release her from a yoke which his cruelty had rendered
odious to her.

Jos went away, convinced that she was the most virtuous,
as she was one of the most fascinating of women,
and revolving in his mind all sorts of benevolent schemes
for her welfare.  Her persecutions ought to be ended:
she ought to return to the society of which she was an
ornament.  He would see what ought to be done.  She
must quit that place and take a quiet lodging.  Amelia
must come and see her and befriend her.  He would go
and settle about it, and consult with the Major.  She wept
tears of heart-felt gratitude as she parted from him, and
pressed his hand as the gallant stout gentleman stooped
down to kiss hers.

So Becky bowed Jos out of her little garret with as
much grace as if it was a palace of which she did the
honours; and that heavy gentleman having disappeared
down the stairs, Max and Fritz came out of their hole,
pipe in mouth, and she amused herself by mimicking Jos
to them as she munched her cold bread and sausage and
took draughts of her favourite brandy-and-water.

Jos walked over to Dobbin's lodgings with great
solemnity and there imparted to him the affecting history
with which he had just been made acquainted, without,
however, mentioning the play business of the night before.
And the two gentlemen were laying their heads together
and consulting as to the best means of being useful to
Mrs. Becky, while she was finishing her interrupted
dejeuner a la fourchette.

How was it that she had come to that little town?
How was it that she had no friends and was wandering
about alone? Little boys at school are taught in their
earliest Latin book that the path of Avernus is very easy
of descent.  Let us skip over the interval in the history of
her downward progress.  She was not worse now than she
had been in the days of her prosperity--only a little
down on her luck.

As for Mrs. Amelia, she was a woman of such a soft
and foolish disposition that when she heard of anybody
unhappy, her heart straightway melted towards the
sufferer; and as she had never thought or done anything
mortally guilty herself, she had not that abhorrence for
wickedness which distinguishes moralists much more
knowing.  If she spoiled everybody who came near her
with kindness and compliments--if she begged pardon
of all her servants for troubling them to answer the bell
--if she apologized to a shopboy who showed her a piece
of silk, or made a curtsey to a street-sweeper with a
complimentary remark upon the elegant state of his crossing
--and she was almost capable of every one of these
follies--the notion that an old acquaintance was miserable
was sure to soften her heart; nor would she hear of
anybody's being deservedly unhappy.  A world under such
legislation as hers would not be a very orderly place of
abode; but there are not many women, at least not of the
rulers, who are of her sort.  This lady, I believe, would
have abolished all gaols, punishments, handcuffs,
whippings, poverty, sickness, hunger, in the world, and was
such a mean-spirited creature that--we are obliged to
confess it--she could even forget a mortal injury.

When the Major heard from Jos of the sentimental
adventure which had just befallen the latter, he was not,
it must be owned, nearly as much interested as the
gentleman from Bengal.  On the contrary, his excitement was
quite the reverse from a pleasurable one; he made use of
a brief but improper expression regarding a poor woman
in distress, saying, in fact, "The little minx, has she
come to light again?" He never had had the slightest liking
for her, but had heartily mistrusted her from the very
first moment when her green eyes had looked at, and
turned away from, his own.

"That little devil brings mischief wherever she goes,"
the Major said disrespectfully.  "Who knows what sort of
life she has been leading? And what business has she
here abroad and alone? Don't tell me about persecutors
and enemies; an honest woman always has friends and
never is separated from her family.  Why has she left her
husband? He may have been disreputable and wicked, as
you say.  He always was.  I remember the confounded
blackleg and the way in which he used to cheat and
hoodwink poor George.  Wasn't there a scandal about their
separation? I think I heard something," cried out Major
Dobbin, who did not care much about gossip, and whom
Jos tried in vain to convince that Mrs. Becky was in all
respects a most injured and virtuous female.

"Well, well; let's ask Mrs. George," said that arch-
diplomatist of a Major.  "Only let us go and consult her.
I suppose you will allow that she is a good judge at any
rate, and knows what is right in such matters."

"Hm!  Emmy is very well," said Jos, who did not
happen to be in love with his sister.

"Very well? By Gad, sir, she's the finest lady I ever
met in my life," bounced out the Major.  "I say at once,
let us go and ask her if this woman ought to be visited
or not--I will be content with her verdict." Now this
odious, artful rogue of a Major was thinking in his own
mind that he was sure of his case.  Emmy, he remembered,
was at one time cruelly and deservedly jealous of
Rebecca, never mentioned her name but with a shrinking
and terror--a jealous woman never forgives, thought
Dobbin:  and so the pair went across the street to Mrs.
George's house, where she was contentedly warbling at
a music lesson with Madame Strumpff.

When that lady took her leave, Jos opened the business
with his usual pomp of words.  "Amelia, my dear,"
said he, "I have just had the most extraordinary--yes--
God bless my soul!  the most extraordinary adventure--
an old friend--yes, a most interesting old friend of
yours, and I may say in old times, has just arrived here,
and I should like you to see her."

"Her!" said Amelia, "who is it? Major Dobbin, if you
please not to break my scissors." The Major was twirling
them round by the little chain from which they sometimes
hung to their lady's waist, and was thereby endangering
his own eye.

It is a woman whom I dislike very much," said the
Major, doggedly, "and whom you have no cause to love."

"It is Rebecca, I'm sure it is Rebecca," Amelia said,
blushing and being very much agitated.

"You are right; you always are," Dobbin answered.
Brussels, Waterloo, old, old times, griefs, pangs,
remembrances, rushed back into Amelia's gentle
heart and caused a cruel agitation there.

"Don't let me see her," Emmy continued.  "I couldn't
see her."

"I told you so," Dobbin said to Jos.

"She is very unhappy, and--and that sort of thing,"
Jos urged.  "She is very poor and unprotected, and has
been ill--exceedingly ill--and that scoundrel of a
husband has deserted her."

"Ah!" said Amelia

"She hasn't a friend in the world," Jos went on, not
undexterously, "and she said she thought she might trust in
you.  She's so miserable, Emmy.  She has been almost mad
with grief.  Her story quite affected me--'pon my word
and honour, it did--never was such a cruel persecution
borne so angelically, I may say.  Her family has been
most cruel to her."

"Poor creature!" Amelia said.

"And if she can get no friend, she says she thinks she'll
die," Jos proceeded in a low tremulous voice.  "God bless
my soul!  do you know that she tried to kill herself? She
carries laudanum with her--I saw the bottle in her room
--such a miserable little room--at a third-rate house,
the Elephant, up in the roof at the top of all.  I went
there."

This did not seem to affect Emmy.  She even smiled a
little.  Perhaps she figured Jos to herself panting up the
stair.

"She's beside herself with grief," he resumed.  "The
agonies that woman has endured are quite frightful to
hear of.  She had a little boy, of the same age as Georgy."

"Yes, yes, I think I remember," Emmy remarked.
"Well?"

"The most beautiful child ever seen," Jos said, who
was very fat, and easily moved, and had been touched by
the story Becky told; "a perfect angel, who adored his
mother.  The ruffians tore him shrieking out of her arms,
and have never allowed him to see her."

"Dear Joseph," Emmy cried out, starting up at once,
"let us go and see her this minute." And she ran into her
adjoining bedchamber, tied on her bonnet in a flutter,
came out with her shawl on her arm, and ordered
Dobbin to follow.

He went and put her shawl--it was a white cashmere,
consigned to her by the Major himself from India--over
her shoulders.  He saw there was nothing for it but to
obey, and she put her hand into his arm, and they went
away.

"It is number 92, up four pair of stairs," Jos said,
perhaps not very willing to ascend the steps again; but he
placed himself in the window of his drawing-room, which
commands the place on which the Elephant stands, and
saw the pair marching through the market.

It was as well that Becky saw them too from her garret,
for she and the two students were chattering and laughing
there; they had been joking about the appearance of
Becky's grandpapa--whose arrival and departure they
had witnessed--but she had time to dismiss them, and
have her little room clear before the landlord of the
Elephant, who knew that Mrs. Osborne was a great favourite
at the Serene Court, and respected her accordingly, led
the way up the stairs to the roof story, encouraging
Miladi and the Herr Major as they achieved the ascent.

"Gracious lady, gracious lady!" said the landlord,
knocking at Becky's door; he had called her Madame the
day before, and was by no means courteous to her.

"Who is it?" Becky said, putting out her head, and she
gave a little scream.  There stood Emmy in a tremble,
and Dobbin, the tall Major, with his cane.

He stood still watching, and very much interested at
the scene; but Emmy sprang forward with open arms
towards Rebecca, and forgave her at that moment, and
embraced her and kissed her with all her heart.  Ah, poor
wretch, when was your lip pressed before by such pure
kisses?



CHAPTER LXVI


Amantium Irae

Frankness and kindness like Amelia's were likely to
touch even such a hardened little reprobate as Becky.  She
returned Emmy's caresses and kind speeches with
something very like gratitude, and an emotion which, if it was
not lasting, for a moment was almost genuine.  That was
a lucky stroke of hers about the child "torn from her
arms shrieking." It was by that harrowing misfortune
that Becky had won her friend back, and it was one of the
very first points, we may be certain, upon which our poor
simple little Emmy began to talk to her new-found
acquaintance.

"And so they took your darling child from you?" our
simpleton cried out.  "Oh, Rebecca, my poor dear suffering
friend, I know what it is to lose a boy, and to feel
for those who have lost one.  But please Heaven yours
will be restored to you, as a merciful merciful Providence
has brought me back mine."

"The child, my child? Oh, yes, my agonies were frightful,"
Becky owned, not perhaps without a twinge of conscience.
It jarred upon her to be obliged to commence
instantly to tell lies in reply to so much confidence and
simplicity.  But that is the misfortune of beginning with
this kind of forgery.  When one fib becomes due as it
were, you must forge another to take up the old
acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation
inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases
every day.

"My agonies," Becky continued, "were terrible (I hope
she won't sit down on the bottle) when they took him
away from me; I thought I should die; but I fortunately
had a brain fever, during which my doctor gave me up,
and--and I recovered, and--and here I am, poor and
friendless."

"How old is he?" Emmy asked.

"Eleven," said Becky.

"Eleven!" cried the other.  "Why, he was born the same
year with Georgy, who is--"

"I know, I know," Becky cried out, who had in fact
quite forgotten all about little Rawdon's age.  "Grief has
made me forget so many things, dearest Amelia.  I am
very much changed:  half-wild sometimes.  He was eleven
when they took him away from me.  Bless his sweet
face; I have never seen it again."

"Was he fair or dark?" went on that absurd little
Emmy.  "Show me his hair."

Becky almost laughed at her simplicity.  "Not to-day,
love--some other time, when my trunks arrive from
Leipzig, whence I came to this place--and a little drawing
of him, which I made in happy days."

"Poor Becky, poor Becky!" said Emmy.  "How thankful,
how thankful I ought to be"; (though I doubt whether
that practice of piety inculcated upon us by our
womankind in early youth, namely, to be thankful because
we are better off than somebody else, be a very rational
religious exercise) and then she began to think, as usual,
how her son was the handsomest, the best, and the
cleverest boy in the whole world.

"You will see my Georgy," was the best thing Emmy
could think of to console Becky.  If anything could make
her comfortable that would.

And so the two women continued talking for an hour
or more, during which Becky had the opportunity of
giving her new friend a full and complete version of her
private history.  She showed how her marriage with
Rawdon Crawley had always been viewed by the family with
feelings of the utmost hostility; how her sister-in-law
(an artful woman) had poisoned her husband's mind
against her; how he had formed odious connections,
which had estranged his affections from her:  how she had
borne everything--poverty, neglect, coldness from the
being whom she most loved--and all for the sake of her
child; how, finally, and by the most flagrant outrage, she
had been driven into demanding a separation from her
husband, when the wretch did not scruple to ask that she
should sacrifice her own fair fame so that he might
procure advancement through the means of a very great and
powerful but unprincipled man--the Marquis of Steyne,
indeed.  The atrocious monster!

This part of her eventful history Becky gave with the
utmost feminine delicacy and the most indignant virtue.
Forced to fly her husband's roof by this insult, the coward
had pursued his revenge by taking her child from her.
And thus Becky said she was a wanderer, poor,
unprotected, friendless, and wretched.

Emmy received this story, which was told at some
length, as those persons who are acquainted with her
character may imagine that she would.  She quivered
with indignation at the account of the conduct of the
miserable Rawdon and the unprincipled Steyne.  Her eyes
made notes of admiration for every one of the sentences
in which Becky described the persecutions of her
aristocratic relatives and the falling away of her husband.
(Becky did not abuse him.  She spoke rather in sorrow
than in anger.  She had loved him only too fondly:  and
was he not the father of her boy?) And as for the separation
scene from the child, while Becky was reciting it,
Emmy retired altogether behind her pocket-handkerchief,
so that the consummate little tragedian must have been
charmed to see the effect which her performance
produced on her audience.

Whilst the ladies were carrying on their conversation,
Amelia's constant escort, the Major (who, of course,
did not wish to interrupt their conference, and found
himself rather tired of creaking about the narrow stair
passage of which the roof brushed the nap from his hat)
descended to the ground-floor of the house and into the
great room common to all the frequenters of the Elephant,
out of which the stair led.  This apartment is always
in a fume of smoke and liberally sprinkled with beer.  On
a dirty table stand scores of corresponding brass
candlesticks with tallow candles for the lodgers, whose keys
hang up in rows.over the candles.  Emmy had passed
blushing through the room anon, where all sorts of
people were collected; Tyrolese glove-sellers and Danubian
linen-merchants, with their packs; students recruiting
themselves with butterbrods and meat; idlers, playing
cards or dominoes on the sloppy, beery tables; tumblers
refreshing during the cessation of their performances--
in a word, all the fumum and strepitus of a German inn
in fair time.  The waiter brought the Major a mug of beer,
as a matter of course, and he took out a cigar and
amused himself with that pernicious vegetable and a
newspaper until his charge should come down to claim him.

Max and Fritz came presently downstairs, their caps on
one side, their spurs jingling, their pipes splendid with
coats of arms and full-blown tassels, and they hung up the
key of No.  90 on the board and called for the ration of
butterbrod and beer.  The pair sat down by the Major and
fell into a conversation of which he could not help hearing
somewhat.  It was mainly about "Fuchs" and "Philister,"
and duels and drinking-bouts at the neighbouring
University of Schoppenhausen, from which renowned
seat of learning they had just come in the Eilwagen,
with Becky, as it appeared, by their side, and in order
to be present at the bridal fetes at Pumpernickel.

"The title Englanderinn seems to be en bays de
gonnoisance," said Max, who knew the French language,
to Fritz, his comrade.  "After the fat grandfather went
away, there came a pretty little compatriot.  I heard