Devereux | Page 6

in which private Vices
generally play the Part of the Scene-shifters

CHAPTER VI.
A long Interval of Years.--A Change of Mind and its Causes

Book VI.

CHAPTER I.
The Retreat

CHAPTER II.
The Victory

CHAPTER III.
The Hermit of the Well

CHAPTER IV.

The Solution of many Mysteries.--A dark View of the Life and Nature
of Man

CHAPTER V.
In which the History makes a great Stride towards the final Catastrophe.
--The Return to England, and the Visit to a Devotee

CHAPTER VI.
The Retreat of a celebrated Man, and a Visit to a great Poet

CHAPTER VII.
The Plot approaches its /Denouement/

CHAPTER VIII.
The Catastrophe

CONCLUSION

DEVEREUX.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.
OF THE HERO'S BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.--NOTHING CAN
DIFFER MORE FROM THE END OF THINGS THAN THEIR
BEGINNING.
MY grandfather, Sir Arthur Devereux (peace be with his ashes!) was a
noble old knight and cavalier, possessed of a property sufficiently large
to have maintained in full dignity half a dozen peers,--such as peers
have been since the days of the first James. Nevertheless, my

grandfather loved the equestrian order better than the patrician, rejected
all offers of advancement, and left his posterity no titles but those to his
estate.
Sir Arthur had two children by wedlock,--both sons; at his death, my
father, the younger, bade adieu to the old hall and his only brother,
prayed to the grim portraits of his ancestors to inspire him, and set
out--to join as a volunteer the armies of that Louis, afterwards
surnamed /le grand/. Of him I shall say but little; the life of a soldier
has only two events worth recording,--his first campaign and his last.
My uncle did as his ancestors had done before him, and, cheap as the
dignity had grown, went up to court to be knighted by Charles II. He
was so delighted with what he saw of the metropolis that he forswore
all intention of leaving it, took to Sedley and champagne, flirted with
Nell Gwynne, lost double the value of his brother's portion at one
sitting to the chivalrous Grammont, wrote a comedy corrected by
Etherege, and took a wife recommended by Rochester. The wife
brought him a child six months after marriage, and the infant was born
on the same day the comedy was acted. Luckily for the honour of the
house, my uncle shared the fate of Plemneus, king of Sicyon, and all
the offspring he ever had (that is to say, the child and the play) "died as
soon as they were born." My uncle was now only at a loss what to do
with his wife,--that remaining treasure, whose readiness to oblige him
had been so miraculously evinced. She saved him the trouble of long
cogitation, an exercise of intellect to which he was never too ardently
inclined. There was a gentleman of the court, celebrated for his
sedateness and solemnity; my aunt was piqued into emulating Orpheus,
and, six weeks after her confinement, she put this rock into
motion,--they eloped. Poor gentleman! it must have been a severe trial
of patience to a man never known before to transgress the very slowest
of all possible walks, to have had two events of the most rapid nature
happen to him in the same week: scarcely had he recovered the shock
of being run away with by my aunt, before, terminating forever his
vagrancies, he was run through by my uncle. The wits made an epigram
upon the event, and my uncle, who was as bold as a lion at the point of
a sword, was, to speak frankly, terribly disconcerted by the point of a
jest. He retired to the country in a fit of disgust and gout. Here his

natural goodness soon recovered the effects of the artificial atmosphere
to which it had been exposed, and he solaced himself by righteously
governing domains worthy of a prince, for the mortifications he had
experienced in the dishonourable career of a courtier.
Hitherto I have spoken somewhat slightingly of my uncle, and in his
dissipation he deserved it, for he was both too honest and too simple to
shine in that galaxy of prostituted genius of which Charles II. was the
centre. But in retirement he was no longer the same person; and I do
not think that the elements of human nature could have furnished forth
a more amiable character than Sir William Devereux presiding at
Christmas over the merriment of his great hall.
Good old man! his very defects were what we loved best in him: vanity
was so mingled with good-nature, that it became graceful, and we
reverenced one the most, while we most smiled at the other.
One peculiarity had he which the age he had