Sir John Constantine | Page 2

ROSE.
VIII. TRIBULATIONS OF A MAYOR.
IX. I ENLIST AN ARMY.
X. OF THE DISCOURSE HELD ON BOARD THE "GAUNTLET".
XI. WE FALL IN WITH A SALLEE ROVER.
XII. HOW WE LANDED ON THE ISLAND.
XIII. HOW, WITHOUT FIGHTING, OUR ARMY WASTED BY
ENCHANTMENT.
XIV. HOW BY MEANS OF HER WINE I CAME TO CIRCE.
XV. I BECOME HOSTAGE TO PRINCESS CAMILLA.
XVI. THE FOREST HUT.
XVII. THE FIRST CHALLENGE.
XVIII. THE TENDER MERCIES OF PRINCE CAMILLO.
XIX. HOW MARC'ANTONIO NURESD ME AND GAVE ME

COUNSEL.
XX. I LEARN OF LIBERTY, AND AM RESTORED TO IT.
XXI. OF MY FATHER'S ANABASIS; AND THE DIFFERENT
TEMPERS OF AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN AND A WILD SHEEP
OF CORSICA.
XXII. THE GREAT ADVENTURE.
XXIII. ORDEAL AND CHOOSING.
XXIV. THE WOOING OF PRINCESS CAMILLA.
XXV. MY WEDDING DAY.
XXVI. THE FLAME AND THE ALTAR.
XXVII. MY MISTRESS RE-ENLISTS ME.
XXVIII. GENOA.
XXIX. VENDETTA.
XXX. THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.
POSTSCRIPT.

SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR JOHN
CONSTANTINE.
"I have laboured to make a covenant with myself, that affection may
not press upon judgment: for I suppose there is no man, that hath any

apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his affection stands to a
continuance of a noble name and house, and would take hold of a twig
or twine-thread to uphold it: and yet time hath his revolution, there
must be a period and an end of all temporal things, finis rerum, an end
of names and dignities and whatsoever is terrene. . . . For where is
Bohun? Where is Mowbray? Where is Mortimer? Nay, which is more
and most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are intombed in the urns
and sepulchres of mortality."--Lord Chief Justice Crewe.
My father, Sir John Constantine of Constantine, in the county of
Cornwall, was a gentleman of ample but impoverished estates, who by
renouncing the world had come to be pretty generally reputed a
madman. This did not affect him one jot, since he held precisely the
same opinion of his neighbours--with whom, moreover, he continued
on excellent terms. He kept six saddle horses in a stable large enough
for a regiment of cavalry; a brace of setters and an infirm spaniel in
kennels which had sometime held twenty couples of hounds; and
himself and his household in a wing of his great mansion, locking off
the rest, with its portraits and tapestries, cases of books, and stands of
antique arms, to be a barrack for the mice. This household consisted of
his brother-in-law, Gervase (a bachelor of punctual habits but a
rambling head); a butler, Billy Priske; a cook, Mrs. Nance, who also
looked after the housekeeping; two serving-maids; and, during his
holidays, the present writer. My mother (an Arundell of Trerice) had
died within a year after giving me birth; and after a childhood which
lacked playmates, indeed, but was by no means neglected or unhappy,
my father took me to Winchester College, his old school, to be
improved in those classical studies which I had hitherto followed
desultorily under our vicar, Mr. Grylls, and there entered me as a
Commoner in the house of Dr. Burton, Head-master. I had spent almost
four years at Winchester at the date (Midsummer, 1756) when this
story begins.
To return to my father. He was, as the world goes, a mass of
contrarieties. A thorough Englishman in the virtues for which
foreigners admire us, and in the extravagance at which they smile, he
had never even affected an interest in the politics over which

Englishmen grow red in the face; and this in his youth had commended
him to Walpole, who had taken him up and advanced him as well for
his abilities, address, and singularly fine presence as because his estate
then seemed adequate to maintain him in any preferment. Again
Walpole's policy abroad--which really treated warfare as the evil it
appears in other men's professions--condemned my father, a born
soldier, to seek his line in diplomacy; wherein he had no sooner built a
reputation by services at two or three of the Italian courts than, with a
knighthood in hand and an ambassadorship in prospect, he suddenly
abandoned all, cast off the world, and retired into Cornwall, to make a
humdrum marriage and practise fishing for trout.
The reason of it none knew, or how his estate had come to be
impoverished, as beyond doubt it was. Here again he showed himself
unlike the rest of men, in that he let the stress of poverty fall first upon
himself, next upon his household, last of all upon his tenants and other
dependants. After my mother's death he cut down his own charges (the
cellar only excepted) to the last penny, shut himself off in a couple of
rooms, slept in