Devereux | Page 8

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 shake his head with a notable archness whenever he heard our reverential description of the expected guest. But, somehow or other, no sooner had he seen the priest than all his proposed railleries deserted him. Not a single witticism came to his assistance, and the calm, smooth face of the ecclesiastic seemed to operate upon the fierce resolves of the facetious knight in the same manner as the human eye is supposed to awe into impotence the malignant intentions of the ignobler animals. Yet nothing could be blander than the demeanour of the Abbe Montreuil; nothing more worldly, in their urbanity, than his manner and address. His garb was as little clerical as possible, his conversation rather familiar than formal, and he invariably listened to every syllable the good knight uttered with a countenance and mien of the most attentive respect.
What then was the charm by which the singular man never failed to obtain an ascendency, in some measure allied with fear, over all in whose company he was thrown? This was a secret my uncle never could solve, and which only in later life I myself was able to discover. It was partly by the magic of an extraordinary and powerful mind, partly by an expression of manner, if I may use such a phrase, that seemed to sneer most, when most it affected to respect; and partly by an air like that of a man never exactly at ease; not that he was shy, or ungraceful, or even taciturn,--no! it was an indescribable embarrassment, resembling that