Читать книгу Asmodeus at Large - Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон - Страница 4

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I put on my hat and walked at once to the Doctor’s house. “Yes,” said I, musingly, "I am certainly in a consumption. I may as well, like Colonel Jones, leave my poor remains to the Surgeons at once, and enjoy the newspaper credit of my generosity before I die. The cholera, however, which is terror to others, is consolation to me. If I were not dying of a Consumption, I should certainly die of the cholera; it is something to escape six bottles of cajeput, and a lamp of spirits of wine between the sheets, by way of a steam bath. Nevertheless,” I resumed, after a pause, and I buttoned up my coat as I spoke, “Nevertheless, consumption is a slow and heavy road out of the world. Short journeys are the pleasantest, and it is the greatest of earthly bores to hear oneself styled for eight months 'the interesting invalid.'I will try then this great operator with a cheerful confidence. If he cannot rub me into health, he will rub me a little sooner into my grave. Next to a long life, what blessing like a quick death!”

With this aphorism I knocked at my quack’s door, and was admitted. A visit to a quack is a very pleasurable excitement. There is something piquant in the disdain for prudence with which we deliver ourselves up to that illegitimate sportsman of human lives, who kills us without a qualification. There is a delicious titillation in a large demand upon our credulity; we like to expect miracles in our own proper person, and we go to the quack from exactly the same feelings with which our ancestors went to the wizard. In what age has not the human mind its darling superstition? It so happened, that I was the last visitant that morning to “Nature’s Grand Restorer.” One after one my predecessors in the waiting-room dropped into the Doctor's study, and out of the Doctor’s house, and at last I found myself alone. While I was indulging in a reverie and a patent chair, I was suddenly aroused by a low clear voice in the room, uttering these words—“We meet them again.” I started. The voice seemed feminine. I looked round. No one was present—not even a stray article of woman’s dress betrayed that a woman had been there. “It must have been in the street,” said I, and resettled myself in the patent chair.

“What!” said the voice again, “will you not speak to me?"

“Who’s there?” cried I, beginning to feel frightened, for I thought it was the soul of a quacked woman! I looked round again. I walked through the apartment. I peeped under the sofa. Naught living could I behold; it was indeed vox etpreterea nihil. “He has rubbed away all but the lady’s voice,” said I to myself, “but that defies him!”

“You seem puzzled,” quoth the voice again.

“You say the truth ma’am; yet I question whether I ought to be. A voice without a woman may be a little strange, it is true; but the real wonder would be a woman without a voice!”

“Those jests on the loquacity of the sex,” replied my invisible communicant, “have certainly the advantage of novelty. It must be confessed that your wit is very original.”

“You have a turn for irony,” said I; “no wonder that a gentlewoman so little incommoded by the corporeal, should be inclined to the sprightly.”

“You mistake,” quoth the airy tongue, “the quality of the person you address. I am no woman, I assure you, though my voice has, I allow, something feminine in its tones."

“What are you then?”

“A Devil!”

“C’est la meme chose!” said I, going hack to my chair very much disappointed.

“Pooh!” said the voice indignantly, "there is no time to lose! The door will be opened presently; you will be summoned into the Doctor’s study, and we may never meet each other again.”

“That would be a great hardship indeed,” said I, “if you have described yourself truly."

“Pooh!” again cried the voice; there speaks the most damnable of human errors. And so you, poor mortal worms, really suppose that we gentlemen devils intend to admit you into our circle, when you quit your vulgar societies here! No, no—we visit you in this world, but never in the next, just as your great people visit folks in the country whom they never receive in their town-houses.”

“You are discourteous, Mr. Devil de bon ton; but I think we can make ourselves quite as comfortable without you.”

“Bah!” replied the Devil. “You would insinuate that you cannot be tormented without us. Absurd! it is your own passions that torment you; those are our deputies, and while you think in our regions below we are actively torturing you, we are sitting quietly in our drawing-rooms playing at rouge et noir, and leave you to torture each other. Envy, jealousy, fear, and repentance—these can play the devil with you very handsomely, without our assistance. But a truce to explanation. Time presses for decision. Know that I am the Devil Asmodeus, whose adventures with Don Cleofas you know so well. At that time I had the pleasure of making your acqaintance.”

"Signor Don Asmodeus,” said I, interrupting the Devil, somewhat briskly, “you do me too much honour; I have had cares and crosses enough in life to write old age in my heart; but in mere years, the vulgar computations of time, I am not quite so ancient as you would allege; sacre diantre! according to you, I should be about one hundred and ninety-five!”

“Mistake not!” returned the Devil, “at that time you existed in another shape.”

“Aha! you are a Pythagorean, then! I hope my old form enjoyed better health than my present one.”

“That is a secret,” said the Devil, mysteriously; I cannot tell you who, or what you were. Transmigration is not a thing to be babbled about; those fellows who pretended in ancient times to remember their former selves, were monstrous impostors, I assure you”

“I easily believe it; but granting our old acquaintance, for my memory certainly cannot contradict you; what is it that Signor Don Asmodeus wishes me to do?”

“Mount that chair, and look on the shelf to the right of the fire-place. You will see a bottle of lotion.”

“Ah! I see it now; and you are at present within that bottle!”

“Exactly; that d—d Quack in the next room, when he made war against mankind, easily persuaded me to enter into partnership with him; but faith, the rogue decoyed me one bright morning into this bottle of lotion, and there I have been caged ever since.”

“What then, it is your presence, I suppose, that gives so strong a power to the lotion?"

“Just so: You have no idea how the water a devil bathes in can blister the skin; it is from this bottle that the Doctor fills his smaller receptacles in the next room. ”

“You then are the great back-rubber,” cried I, in much horror; “you are the hole-maker, and the lady-destroyer! and going to the Doctor is but another phrase for going to the Devil!”

“Do not reproach me now,” said the demon, in a melancholy voice, “I suffer myself, I assure you, in this infernal sea of cantharides, as much as the creatures I destroy. Willingly would I be released from my present confinement, and if you have pity either for devil or man, you will take me out of the Doctor’s possession. Fortunate, indeed, was it for you that I recognised you as an old acquaintance; to new debutants in this world, I am not suffered to demean myself by an introduction—that is left to demons of lower rank; fortunate, I say, was it for you, or I should have clawed all the skia off your back before you knew what a deuce of a fellow had got hold of you.”

"If I release you,” said I musingly, it will certainly be for the benefit of mankind; but then you know—most philosophical Devil—that there is nothing in the world like an enlarged self-interest, and I want to make the best bargain I can with you also, for myself. Will you be to me the same Cicerone and companion that you were to Don Cleofas? I am subject to fits of fearful despondency—I want an entertaining companion—I am too absent for women, and too gloomy for men; but I think I could be excellent friends with a polite devil.”

“All that I was to Don Cleofas, that will I be to you! More than I was to Don Cleofas, I can be to you also; for Don Cleofas was an idle young man, a mere student, just wise enough for a lover. He would have been incapable of understanding half the sights I should have wished to reveal to him; and as to our discourses, they owe all their merit to that wittiest of eaves-droppers—Le Sage; but you, sir, are just the person—nay never blush, on the honour of a gentleman—you are just the person I could take a pleasure in instructing. The past—the present—this world—a great portion of the other—all that now live—all that have ever lived—I can show you at your command. Nay, if you have the courage, we can take an occasional trip to the moon, or perform the grand tour of the lactea via! What a pleasant way of passing this dull winter! Then, too, I have a large acquaintance among the fairies, and I can let you into more secrets in that quarter, than Master Crofton Croker is well aware of. As to mortals—the highest—the fairest—the wisest—I can make you intimate with them all. You shall shoot with Charles X. at Holyrood—dine with the Duke of Reichstadt, and ask him if he remembers that he is the son of Napoleon. You shall sit on the woolsack with Brougham, and see me uncork the nonsense of Londonderry. You shall eat your fish at the Rocher de Cancale, when you incline to the gourmand; and gaze on the moon from the shattered arches of the Colosseum, when you meditate the romantic!”

“Your offers content me,” said I, less enthusiastically than the Devil expected; “I accept them at once: the time indeed has passed since either luxury or romance had the power to charm: but I can still be amused, if no longer delighted. Come, then, shall I put you into my pocket, and carry you and your prison away?”

“No!” returned the Devil, “you must open the window, and throw the phial out upon the stones!”

“And you—”

“Will have the honour to be in waiting for you at your own rooms by the time you arrive there.” “But, Signor Don Asmodeus, there is no compact between us, you will please to recollect I shall endorse no bills you may wish to present me, payable in the next world. I shall be happy to make your acquaintance in an honest way, but I cannot afford to lend you my soul.”

"Bah!” said Asmodeus, “those bargains are obsolete; hell must have been badly peopled at that time; now we have more souls than we know what to do with.” Reassured by this information, I opened the window, and threw the lotion on the pavement: I had scarcely done so, before the Doctor’s bell rang, and I knew that it was my turn to be rubbed: my ardour for that personal experiment was, however, wonderfully abated; I doubted not but that the doctor had other bottles equally calculated to play the Devil with one. I seized my stick and gloves, brushed by the servant with an unintelligible mutter, and walked home to see if my new acquaintance was a gentleman of his word.

“A stranger, Sir, in the library,” said my servant in opening the door.

“Indeed! what, a short lame gentleman?”

“No, sir; middle-sized,—has very much the air of a lawyer or professional man.”

I entered the room, and instead of the dwarf demon Le Sage described, I beheld a comely man seated at the table, with a high forehead, a sharp face, and a pair of spectacles on his nose. He was employed in reading the new novel of “The Usurer’s Daughter.”

“This cannot be the devil!” said I to myself; so I bowed, and asked the gentleman his business.

“Tush!” quoth my visiter; “and how did you leave the Doctor?”

It is you, then!” said I; “you have grown greatly since you left Don Cleofas.”

“Wars fatten our tribe,” answered the Devil; “besides shapes are optional with me, and in England men go by appearances more than they do abroad; one is forced to look respectable and portly: the Devil himself could not cheat your countrymen with a shabby exterior. Doubtless you observe that all the swindlers, whose adventures enliven your journals, are dressed 'in the height of fashion,'and enjoy ‘a mild prepossessing demeanour.’ Even the Cholera does not menace 'a gentleman of the better ranks;’ and no bodies are burked with a decent suit of clothes on their backs. Wealth in all countries is the highest possible morality; but you carry the doctrine to so great an excess, that you scarcely suffer the poor man to exist at all. If he take a walk in the country, there’s the Vagrant Act; and if he has not a penny to hire a cellar in town, he’s snapped up by a Burker, and sent off to the surgeons in a sack. It must be owned that no country affords such warnings to the spendthrift. You are one great moral against the getting rid of one’s money.”

On this, Asmodeus and myself had a long conversation; it ended in our dining together, (for I found him a social fellow, and fond of a broil in a quiet way;) and adjourning in excellent spirits, to the theatre.

“Certainly,” said the Devil, taking a pinch of snuff, "certainly, your drama is wonderful fine, it is worthy of a civilized nation; formerly you were contented with choosing actors among human kind, but what an improvement to go among the brute creation! think what a fine idea to have a whole play turn upon the appearance of a broken-backed lion! And so you are going to raise the drama by setting up a club; that’s another exquisite notion! You hire a great house in the neighbourhood of the theatre; you call it the Garrick Club.

You allow actors and patrons to mix themselves and their negus there after the play; and this you call a design for exalting the drama. Certainly you English are a droll set; your expedients are admirable.”

“My good Devil, any thing that brings actors and spectators together, that creates an esprit de corps among all who cherish the drama, is not to be sneered at in that inconsiderate manner.”

“I sneer! you mistake me; you have adduced a most convincing argument, esprit de corps!—good! Your clubs certainly nourish sociality greatly; those little tables, with one sulky man before one sulky chop—those hurried nods between acquaintances—that monopoly of newspapers and easy chairs—all exhibit to perfection the cementing faculties of a club. Then, too, it certainly does an actor inestimable benefit to mix with lords and squires. Nothing more fits a man for his profession, than living with people who knew nothing about it Only think what a poor actor Kean is; you would have made him quite a different thing, if you had tied him to tame gentlemen in the “Garrick Club.” He would have played “Richard” in a much higher vein, I doubt not.”

“Well,” said I, “the stage is your affair at present, and doubtless you do right to reject any innovation.”

"Why, yes,” quoth the Devil, looking round; “we have a very good female supply in this quarter. But pray how comes it that the English are so candid in sin? Among all nations there is immorality enough, Heavens knows; but you are so delightfully shameless: if a crime is committed here, you can’t let it 'waste its sweetness;’ you thrust it into your papers forthwith; you stick it upon your walls; you produce it at your theatres; you chat about it as an agreeable subject of conversation; and then you cry out with a blush against the open profligacy abroad! This is one of those amiable contradictions in human nature that charm me excessively. You fill your theatres with ladies of pleasure—you fill your newspapers with naughty accounts—a robbery is better to you than a feast—and a good fraud in the city will make you happy for a week; and all this while you say: 'We are the people who send vice to Coventry, and teach the world how to despise immorality.'Nay, if one man commits a murder, your newspapers kindly instruct his associates how to murder in future, by a far safer method. A wretch kills a boy for the surgeons, by holding his head under water: ‘Silly dog!’ cries the Morning Herald, 'why did not he clap a sponge dipped in prussic acid to the boy’s mouth?”'

Here we were interrupted by a slight noise in the next box, which a gentleman had just entered. He was a tall man, with a handsome face and very prepossessing manner.

“That is an Author of considerable reputation," said my Devil, "quiet, though a man of wit, and with a heart, though a man of the world. Talking of the drama, he once brought out a farce, which had the good fortune to be damned. As great expectations had been formed of it, and the author’s name had transpired; the unsuccessful writer rose the next morning with a hissing sound in his ears, and that leaning towards misanthropy, which you men always experience when the world has the bad taste to mistake your merits. 'Thank Fate, however,'said the Author, ‘it is damned thoroughly—it is off the stage—I cannot be hissed again—in a few days it will be forgotten—meanwhile I will take a walk in the Park.’ Scarce had the gentleman got into the street, before, lo! at a butcher’s shop blazed the 'very head and front of his offending.’ 'Second night of its appearance, the admired Farce of—, by—, Esq.’ Away posts the Author to the Manager.

'Good heavens, sir! my farce again! was it not thoroughly damned last night?’

'Thoroughly damned!’ quoth the Manager, drily; ‘we reproduce it, sir—we reproduce it (with a knowing wink,) that the world, enraged at our audacity, may come here to damn it again!’ So it is, you see! the love of money is the contempt of man: there’s an aphorism for you! Let us turn to the stage. What actresses you have!—certainly you English are a gallant nation; you are wonderfully polite to come and see such horrible female performers! By the by, you observed when that young lady came on the stage, how timidly she advanced, how frightened she seemed. “What modesty!” cry the audience; “we must encourage her!” they clap, they shout, they pity the poor thing, they cheer her into spirits. Would you believe that the hardest thing the Manager had to do with her was to teach her that modesty. She wanted to walk on the stage like a grenadier, and it required fifteen lessons to make her be ashamed of herself. It is in these things that the stage mimics the world, rather behind the scenes than before!”

Bless me, how Braham is improved!” cried a man with spectacles, behind me; “he acts now better than he sings!”

“Is it not strange,” said Asmodeus, how long the germ of a quality may remain latent in the human mind, and how completely you mortals are the creatures of culture? It was not till his old age that Braham took lessons in acting; some three times a week has he of late wended his way down to the comedian of Chapel-street, to learn energy and counterfeit warmth; and the best of it is, that the spectators will have it that an Actor feels all he acts; as if Human Nature, wicked as it is, could feel Richard the Third every other night I remember, Mrs. Siddons had a majestic manner of extending her arm as she left the stage. 'What grace!’ said the world, with tears in its eyes, 'what dignity! what a wonderful way of extending an arm! you see her whole soul is in the part!'The arm was in reality stretched impatiently out for a pinch from the snuff-box that was always in readiness behind the scenes.”

It is my misfortune, Reader, to be rapidly bored. I cannot sit out a sermon, much less a play; amusement is the most tedious of human pursuits.

“You are tired of this, surely,” said I to the Devil; “let us go!”

“Whither?” said Asmodeus.

“Why, 'tis a starlit night, let us ride over to Paris, and sup, as you promised, at the Rocher de Cancale.”

“Volontiers."

Away—away—away—into the broad still heavens, the stars dancing merrily above us, and the mighty heart of the City beating beneath the dusky garment of Night below.

“Let us look down,” said Asmodeus; “what a wilderness of houses! shall I uncover the roofs for you, as I did for Don Cleofas; or rather, for it is ah easier method, shall I touch your eyes with my salve of penetration, and enable you to see at once through the wall?” ,

“You might as well do so; it is pleasant to feel the power, though at present I think it superfluous; wherever I look, I can only see rogues and fools, with a stray honest man now and then, who is probably in prison. ”

Asmodeus touched my eyes with a green salve, which he took out of an ivory box, and all at once, my sight being directed towards a certain palace, I beheld

* * * * *

“And what thought you of the last discussions on the Reform Bill?” quoth the Devil, as we cantered through the clouds to Dover.

“Dull beyond measure. I took my seat under the Gallery—no spirit in the debate—and not one speech save Stanley’s that did justice to the speaker. Macauley served up his old speeches as a hash, uttered some fearful sophisms, for so fine an intellect. The worst of that House is, that a sophism or a common-place is absolutely necessary to produce a splendid effect Heavens! how they yell on Croker when he is illustrating misstatement; the natural beauty of Truth grows fearfully darkened in that dim oak room. But let us not rush into that vetitum nefas—that most hacknied of all subjects. What is there new?"

“Faith,” said Asmodeus, “I ought to ask you that! A demon caged in a bottle of lotion is in a pretty plight to learn news, truly! I amused myself with looking over a few new books oh your table. I read them as attentively as a reviewer; viz. six volumes in a quarter of an hour. I perceived three satirical poems lying together. Ah, said I, 'Lays for the Lords2 on the one side of the question, and the 'Tauroboliad'on the other. ”3

“And the ‘Tale of Tucuman,'4 more after my own vein than either,” added Asmodeus, "for it hits devilish hard upon both sides. But how strangely times have altered in your poetical literature within the last twenty years; formerly, I remember well that no poetry was so successful as the satirical. A pamphlet of strong rhyme, with a liberal use of the mysterious asterisk, ran through half a dozen editions in a week. Now, what on earth are you all so indifferent to as satire, unless it be the satire of the Sunday newspapers? Here, for instance, is the ‘Tauroboliad,’ a poem of remarkable causticity and polish, and certainly equal in many parts to the ‘Pursuits of Literature;’ and not a bookseller could be found to publish it but Hatchard, and he, I fear, will not rejoice at his daring. 'The Lays for the Lords'is a tempting title, and the poem is rough and manly enough, one would think, to charm you Radicals into laying out half a crown upon the abuse of the Tories. But I fancy if you had many half crowns to spare, you would be Tories also.”

“As for the 'Tale of Tucuman,’ said I, properly disregarding the illiberal sarcasm of the Devil, whom I suspect to be a Tory in his heart; “it has been largely and justly lauded by the critics, and evinces what is rare enough in a satirist —a mind that thinks rightly, and goes at once to the depth of things. The author has in him the stuff to make a very valuable writer, and I think he will do your cause harm yet before he dies.” “My cause!” said Asmodeus, stopping short, in despite of the strong winds that now almost blew us away in the Straits of Dover. “My cause! Ah, you mortals wrong us devils,—upon my honour, you do: the origin of human evil is ignorance; and who was it that put it into your ancestor’s head to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge?”

“Grant me patience!” cried I, “here have I avoided all the world to have a respite from philosophers, and the march of intellect; and I cannot even form an acquaintance with a devil without being plagued with the origin of evil—ignorance and the tree of knowledge. Signor Don Asmodeus, if you are going to be metaphysical-”

“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Asmodeus, very humbly, "I was thinking of Holland House.”

We got on most famously, as the reader will believe, while Asmodeus and I were thus chatting, now on one thing, now on the other—sometimes of the Emperor of Russia, sometimes of Captain Marryatt’s last novel—which, as we were crossing the sea, was the more apropos subject of the two, (and which, by the by, I can recommend to the reader as a capital thing,5)—sometimes of war, sometimes of love, sometimes of the great wonders in the deep beneath us, and sometimes—though the Devil was shy here—of the happy stars, that twinkled their bright eyes so cheerily above. We paused a moment over the town of Boulogne, to recruit ourselves and change our steeds; (for we were mounted on a pair of Mr. Croker’s notions of French politics—and they could never go a step farther than Boulogne.) As the Devil looked aslant on that little nest of English imperfections, his heart seemed to swell within him—“Oh, Sentina Gentium!” cried he, aloud—“sink of impurities—reservoir, into which, through the mighty drains of the ocean, England pours off the most fetid of her humours; who can look at thy little, turbulent, gambling, black-legged, duelling, swaggering world, without amazement and emotion? Botany Bay of society—living gazette of bankrupts, whether of character, hope, fortune, or health—in whose small page is crowded so voluminous a list! how pleasant it is to look upon thy motley varieties, and to feel that we may, indeed, go farther, but we can never fare worse! Paris is the Circe of the world, and Boulogne is her pigsty!”

I smiled at the Devil’s panegyric, looking down I beheld a multiplicity of scenes that fully proved its impartiality. There, in the High Town, I saw a fraudulent trader giving a ball from the profits of a bankruptcy; and, in the next house, two captains on half-pay were exchanging shots across a table. In a small garret, in the lower part of the town, sat a squalid family, whom the bankrupt had ruined; the children crying for bread, and the father cursing for brandy, and the mother wishing herself dead. Far by the solitary shore, was a smuggler’s vessel, which dark forms were crowding with various goods—here a box of French lace for a duchess; there a chest of human corpses for the surgeons; here, spirits for a wine-merchant, who was a miser: there, indecent prints for his son, who was a spendthrift. “That vessel,” quoth the Devil, “is a type of the town!”

“And of the world, too!” said I. “Let us canter on.”

We had mounted on a couple of schemes for Saint Simonizing Paris, which the Devil caught out of the soul of a French waiter, and we were up in the clouds in an instant.

“Damn it!” quoth the Devil, very profanely, “we shall be in the moon presently. When a Frenchman does speculate, he takes good care to do it in right earnest: Earth’s lost sight of before you can say Jack Robinson.”

“And, pray, my dear Don, what think you of all these schemes that fluctuate throughout France —this visionary lust of change—this non-contentment—this shifting tendency to all excitation—this shot-silk colouring of the public mind, that changes hue in every light that you look at it—does it ndt portend ultimate benefit to us miserable mortals?”

“Humph!” growled Asmodeus, “I know nothing of the future; but, as a devil of sense, though no prophet, i think, it is not so dangerous to the present generation in France as in England. If you don’t take care, and settle that stupid Bill of yours very shortly, you will sink at once from the highest commercial nation in the world into a fifth-rate power. A trading people, who are only great artificially, and are prosperous upon credit, cannot long bear an excitement that unsettles commerce, makes debtors pressing, money scarce, tradesmen sore, farmers grumbling, and the desire for change so habitual, and at last a great change itself so necessary, that moderate change will be but a thimbleful of water on the fire. The soil of your greatness, compared to that of France, is like the soil of your land compared to hers. A war devastates France, ruins her harvests, crushes her vineyards, and in two years afterwards all is as fertile as before—thanks to Nature!—but your light, thin, sandy stratum—one vast hothouse of skilful forcing—if an army passed over it, would take a dozen years to recover—thanks to Art! So is it with your moral condition, equally artificial as your soil. What agitates France now, injures her not to-morrow. What agitates England now, if not speedily removed, will do the evil work of a century. Look to yourselves in time, and if you must have excitement, prefer the agitations of freedom to the fever of discontent.”

“My dear Devil, what a libel on yourself and your brethren to say you can’t speak truth!”

“It is so,” answered Asmodeus; “we speak truth exactly because that is the very way to make mankind run into error. Truth is the true Cassandra—fated never to be believed till too-late!”

Away—away—away—with the dull English lord in his caleche and four creeping behind us, and the breath of the mail’s panting horses dying on our track—away through that gladsome air which dances over the valleys of France, and mounts into the brain like a glorious wine—away above the lamp-lit towns, with the husband already asleep, and the lover for ever waking—away, below the gay moon that has just come out, to smile at once upon Joy and Sorrow, Innocence and Crime, the fair stpic of Heaven. We are in Paris!

“There is a change,” said Asmodeus, as we sat perched on the dome of the Invalids_y “ there is a change in Paris since you were last here. Observe how serious the salons have become; the campagne of society has lost its sparkle.”

I looked into the old remembered houses: Asmodeus said right—people were gambling, and talking, and making love as before, hut not with the same gaiety; the dark spirit of change worked vividly beneath the surface of manners; circles , were more mixed and motley than they had been; men without the “De " mixed familiarly with those who boasted the blood of princes; a tone of insolence seemed substituted for the tone of intrigue; and men appeared resolved rather to command the attainment of their wishes than to wheedle themselves into it,

“Fit subjects!” quoth the Devil, lighting his cigar, “for a king who rides bodkin in an omnibus!”

From these scenes I turned with great interest to one that contrasted them forcibly. Apart—alone, in a quiet chamber, sat a man somewhat stricken in years, with a fine and worn counter nance, that spoke genius in every line. He leant his head on his hand; papers and books strewed the table at which he sat, and I noted especially one pamphlet, entitled, “De la Nouvelle Proposition relative au Bannissement de Charles X. et de sa Famille.”

"Wonderful power of pen and ink!” said Asmodeus. “Great ruler of human hearts!—talk of the authority of despots—the quill of a goose is the true sceptre. You see there a man who, by the mere charm of his pen, has made himself a fourth estate: a visionary in his youth, a quack in his old age, he is yet the most remarkable being that France can now boast of. But as for you Englishmen, locked up in your own little island, and reading Mr. Hunt’s speeches about Preston, you absolutely do not know any thing more about M. de Chateaubriand, and his present influence in France, than that he wrote a pamphlet the other "day, which pamphlet has never been even translated in London, and has been read in the original by at most six Londoners. And yet this pamphlet, which you, I fancy, conclude to be the same sort of thing as 'What will the Lords do next?’ raised its author at once into a throne of opinion, and made a greater sensation in France than the finest poem of your Byron ever created in England,”6 The more the pity for France. I was in hopes she had passed the time when fine words could set her feelings against her principles.”

“You are still mounted on a chimera,” said the Devil, sarcastically. “France can always be won by addressing her heart, just the same as eloquence with you must be addressed to the pocket. You speak to the one of her national greatness, to the other of her national debt; but it is unfortunate for you English, that you do not pay more attention to foreign literature and foreign politics. You ought to hear what the rest of the world say of you;—you ought to see how grand, how true the views, which, from a just distance, Frenchmen iu particular, form of your present situation. You are like a man who can only talk of himself, and to himself; one great National Soliloquist wrapt in a Monologue!”

With that, Asmodeus threw away the stump of his cigar, and we alighted at the door of the Rocher. Small, cheerful chamber, do I see you again, with the large brown sleek cat in the armchair! Stir up the fire—make haste with the Chambertin and the Saute—where is the playbill, and the Figaro? Oh, Asmodeus! in this city I find again the pleasures of youth! Can you restore to me also the health,—the heart to enjoy them?”

2. Effingham Wilson, 1831.

3. Hatchard, 1831.

4. Effingham Wilson, 1831.

5. “Newton Forster,” Cochrane and Pickersgill.

6. The writer of the article on Talleyrand considers that great diplomat, we think with greatfelicity, the “Voltaire” of politics —M. de Chateaubriand is the Rousseau.