Devereux | Page 8

made me love to listen to
stories of courts and courtiers, my uncle returned the compliment by
declaring of my wit, as the angler declared of the River Lea, that one
would find enough in it, if one would but angle sufficiently long.
Nor was this all; my uncle and myself were exceedingly like the waters
of Alpheus and Arethusa,--nothing was thrown into the one without
being seen very shortly afterwards floating upon the other. Every
witticism or legend Sir William imparted to me (and some, to say truth,
were a little tinged with the licentiousness of the times he had lived in),
I took the first opportunity of retailing, whatever might be the audience;
and few boys, at the age of thirteen, can boast of having so often as
myself excited the laughter of the men and the blushes of the women.
This circumstance, while it aggravated my own vanity, delighted my
uncle's; and as I was always getting into scrapes on his account, so he
was perpetually bound, by duty, to defend me from the charges of
which he was the cause. No man defends another long without loving
him the better for it; and perhaps Sir William Devereux and his eldest
nephew were the only allies in the world who had no jealousy of each
other.

CHAPTER II.

A FAMILY CONSULTATION.--A PRIEST, AND AN ERA IN LIFE.
"YOU are ruining the children, my dear Sir William," said my gentle
mother, one day when I had been particularly witty; "and the Abbe
Montreuil declares it absolutely necessary that they should go to
school."
"To school!" said my uncle, who was caressing his right leg, as it lay
over his left knee,--"to school, Madam! you are joking. What for,
pray?"
"Instruction, my dear Sir William," replied my mother.
"Ah, ah; I forgot that; true, true!" said my uncle, despondingly, and
there was a pause. My mother counted her rosary; my uncle sank into a
revery; my twin brother pinched my leg under the table, to which I
replied by a silent kick; and my youngest fixed his large, dark, speaking
eyes upon a picture of the Holy Family, which hung opposite to him.
My uncle broke the silence; he did it with a start.
"Od's fish, Madam,"--(my uncle dressed his oaths, like himself, a little
after the example of Charles II.)--"od's fish, Madam, I have thought of
a better plan than that; they shall have instruction without going to
school for it."
"And how, Sir William?"
"I will instruct them myself, Madam," and William slapped the calf of
the leg he was caressing.
My mother smiled.
"Ay, Madam, you may smile; but I and my Lord Dorset were the best
scholars of the age; you shall read my play."
"Do, Mother," said I, "read the play. Shall I tell her some of the jests in
it, Uncle?"

My mother shook her head in anticipative horror, and raised her finger
reprovingly. My uncle said nothing, but winked at me; I understood the
signal, and was about to begin, when the door opened, and the Abbe
Montreuil entered. My uncle released his right leg, and my jest was cut
off. Nobody ever inspired a more dim, religious awe than the Abbe
Montreuil. The priest entered with a smile. My mother hailed the
entrance of an ally.
"Father," said she, rising, "I have just represented to my good brother
the necessity of sending my sons to school; he has proposed an
alternative which I will leave you to discuss with him."
"And what is it?" said Montreuil, sliding into a chair, and patting
Gerald's head with a benignant air.
"To educate them himself," answered my mother, with a sort of
satirical gravity. My uncle moved uneasily in his seat, as if, for the first
time, he saw something ridiculous in the proposal.
The smile, immediately fading from the thin lips of the priest, gave way
to an expression of respectful approbation. "An admirable plan," said
he slowly, "but liable to some little exceptions, which Sir William will
allow me to point out."
My mother called to us, and we left the room with her. The next time
we saw my uncle, the priest's reasonings had prevailed. The following
week we all three went to school. My father had been a Catholic, my
mother was of the same creed, and consequently we were brought up in
that unpopular faith. But my uncle, whose religion had been sadly
undermined at court, was a terrible caviller at the holy mysteries of
Catholicism; and while his friends termed him a Protestant, his enemies
hinted, falsely enough, that he was a sceptic. When Montreuil first
followed us to Devereux Court, many and bitter were the little jests my
worthy uncle had provided for his reception; and he would