Coningsby | Page 9

sources of influence in his estimate of the
domestic tie, he had witnessed under the roof of Beaumanoir the
existence of a family bound together by the most beautiful affections.
He could not forget how Henry Sydney was embraced by his sisters
when he returned home; what frank and fraternal love existed between
his kinsman and his elder brother; how affectionately the kind Duke
had welcomed his son once more to the house where they had both
been born; and the dim eyes, and saddened brows, and tones of
tenderness, which rather looked than said farewell, when they went
back to Eton.

And these rapturous meetings and these mournful adieus were
occasioned only by a separation at the most of a few months, softened
by constant correspondence and the communication of mutual
sympathy. But Coningsby was to meet a relation, his near, almost his
only, relation, for the first time; the relation, too, to whom he owed
maintenance, education; it might be said, existence. It was a great
incident for a great drama; something tragical in the depth and stir of its
emotions. Even the imagination of the boy could not be insensible to its
materials; and Coningsby was picturing to himself a beneficent and
venerable gentleman pressing to his breast an agitated youth, when his
reverie was broken by the carriage stopping before the gates of
Monmouth House.
The gates were opened by a gigantic Swiss, and the carriage rolled into
a huge court-yard. At its end Coningsby beheld a Palladian palace, with
wings and colonnades encircling the court.
A double flight of steps led into a circular and marble hall, adorned
with colossal busts of the Caesars; the staircase in fresco by Sir James
Thornhill, breathed with the loves and wars of gods and heroes. It led
into a vestibule, painted in arabesques, hung with Venetian girandoles,
and looking into gardens. Opening a door in this chamber, and
proceeding some little way down a corridor, Mr. Rigby and his
companion arrived at the base of a private staircase. Ascending a few
steps, they reached a landing-place hung with tapestry. Drawing this
aside, Mr. Rigby opened a door, and ushered Coningsby through an
ante-chamber into a small saloon, of beautiful proportions, and
furnished in a brilliant and delicate taste.
'You will find more to amuse you here than where you were before,'
said Mr. Rigby, 'and I shall not be nearly so long absent.' So saying, he
entered into an inner apartment.
The walls of the saloon, which were covered with light blue satin, held,
in silver panels, portraits of beautiful women, painted by Boucher.
Couches and easy chairs of every shape invited in every quarter to
luxurious repose; while amusement was afforded by tables covered
with caricatures, French novels, and endless miniatures of foreign

dancers, princesses, and sovereigns.
But Coningsby was so impressed with the impending interview with his
grandfather, that he neither sought nor required diversion. Now that the
crisis was at hand, he felt agitated and nervous, and wished that he was
again at Eton. The suspense was sickening, yet he dreaded still more
the summons. He was not long alone; the door opened; he started, grew
pale; he thought it was his grandfather; it was not even Mr. Rigby. It
was Lord Monmouth's valet.
'Monsieur Konigby?'
'My name is Coningsby,' said the boy.
'Milor is ready to receive you,' said the valet.
Coningsby sprang forward with that desperation which the scaffold
requires. His face was pale; his hand was moist; his heart beat with
tumult. He had occasionally been summoned by Dr. Keate; that, too,
was awful work, but compared with the present, a morning visit. Music,
artillery, the roar of cannon, and the blare of trumpets, may urge a man
on to a forlorn hope; ambition, one's constituents, the hell of previous
failure, may prevail on us to do a more desperate thing; speak in the
House of Commons; but there are some situations in life, such, for
instance, as entering the room of a dentist, in which the prostration of
the nervous system is absolute.
The moment had at length arrived when the desolate was to find a
benefactor, the forlorn a friend, the orphan a parent; when the youth,
after a childhood of adversity, was to be formally received into the
bosom of the noble house from which he had been so long estranged,
and at length to assume that social position to which his lineage entitled
him. Manliness might support, affection might soothe, the happy
anguish of such a meeting; but it was undoubtedly one of those
situations which stir up the deep fountains of our nature, and before
which the conventional proprieties of our ordinary manners
instantaneously vanish.

Coningsby with an uncertain step followed his guide through a
bed-chamber, the sumptuousness of which