Tales and Novels Volume VII Part 45

At this period of their acquaintance with Count Altenberg, every circ.u.mstance which drew out his character, tastes, and opinions, was interesting to the Percy family in general, and in particular to Caroline. The most commonplace and disagreeable characters often promoted this purpose, and thus afforded means of amus.e.m.e.nt, and materials for reflection. Towards the end of breakfast, the newspapers were brought in--the commissioner, who had wondered frequently what could make them so late, seized upon the government-paper directly, which he pocketed, and retired, after handing other newspapers to Count Altenberg and to the Mr. Clays. English Clay, setting down his well-sugared cup of tea, leaving a happily-prepared morsel of ham and bread and b.u.t.ter on his plate, turned his back upon the ladies; and comfortably settling himself with his arm over his chair, and the light full upon London news, began to read to himself. Count Altenberg glanced at _Continental News_, as he unfolded his paper, but instantly turned to _Gazette Extraordinary_, which he laid before Mrs. Falconer. She requested him, if it was not too much trouble, to read it aloud. "I hope my foreign accent will not make it unintelligible," said he; and without farther preface, or considering how he was to appear himself, he obeyed.

Though he had not a perfectly English accent, he showed that he had a thoroughly English heart, by the joy and pride he took in reading an account of a great victory.

English Clay turned round upon his chair, and setting his arms a-kimbo, with the newspaper still fast in his hand, and his elbow sticking out across Lady Anne Arlington, sat facing the count, and listening to him With a look of surprise. "Why, d----m'me, but you're a good fellow, after all!" exclaimed he, "though you are not an Englishman!"

"By the mother's side I am, sir," replied Count Altenberg. "I may boast that I am at least half an Englishman."

"Half is better than the whole," said French Clay, scornfully.

"By the Lord, I could have sworn his mother, or some of his blood, was Englis.h.!.+" cried English Clay. "I beg your pardon, ma'am--'fraid I annoy your ladys.h.i.+p?" added he, perceiving that the Lady Anne haughtily retreated from his offending elbow.

Then sensible of having committed himself by his sudden burst of feeling, he coloured all over, took up his tea, drank as if he wished to hide his face for ever in the cup, recovered his head with mighty effort, turned round again to his newspaper, and was cold and silent as before. His brother meanwhile was, or affected to be, more intent upon some _eau sucree_, that he was preparing for himself, than upon the fate of the army and navy of Spain or England. Rising from the breakfast table, he went into the adjoining room, and threw himself at full length upon a sofa; Lady Frances Arlington, who detested politics, immediately followed, and led the way to a work-table, round which the ladies gathered, and formed themselves in a few minutes into a committee of dress, all speaking at once; Count Altenberg went with the ladies out of the breakfast-room, where English Clay would have been happy to have remained alone; but being interrupted by the entrance of the servants, he could not enjoy peaceable possession, and he was compelled also to follow:--getting as far as he could from the female committee, he took Petcalf into a window to talk of horses, and commenced a history of the colts of Regulus, and of the plates they had won.

French Clay, rising from the sofa, and adjusting his cravat at a looking-gla.s.s, carelessly said, addressing himself to Count Altenberg, "I think, M. le Comte, I heard you say something about public feelings.

Now, I do not comprehend precisely what is meant by public feelings; for my part, I am free to confess that I have none."

"I certainly must have expressed myself ill," replied Count Altenberg; "I should have said, love of our country."

Mrs. Percy, Rosamond, and Caroline, escaped from the committee of dress, were now eagerly listening to this conversation.

"And if you had, M. le Comte, I might, _en philosophe_, have been permitted to ask," replied French Clay, "what is love of our country, but a mere _prejudice_? and to a person of an _emanc.i.p.ated_ mind, that word prejudice says volumes. a.s.suredly M. le Comte will allow, and must _feel well_, that no prejudice ever was or can be useful to mankind."

The Count fully admitted that utility is the best human test by which all sentiment, as well as every thing else, can be tried: but he observed that Mr. Clay had not yet proved love of our country to be a useless or pernicious principle of action: and by his own argument, if it can be proved to be useful, it should not be called, in the invidious sense of the word, a prejudice.

"True--but the labour of the proof fortunately rests with you, M. le Comte."

Count Altenberg answered in French, speaking very rapidly. "It is a labour saved me fortunately, by the recorded experience of all history, by the testimony of the wisest and the best in all, countries, ancient and modern--all agree in proclaiming love of our country to be one of the most powerful, most permanent motives to good and great actions; the most expansive, elevating principle--elevating without danger--expansive without waste; the principle to which the legislator looks for the preservative against corruption in states--to which the moralist turns for the antidote against selfishness in individuals. Recollect, name any great character, ancient or modern--is not love of his country one of his virtues? Can you draw--can you conceive a great character--a great or a good character, or even a safe member of society without it? A man hangs loose upon society, as your own Burke says--"

"Ah! M. le Comte!" cried Clay, shrinking with affected horror, "I repent--I see what I have brought upon myself; after Burke will come Cicero; and after Cicero all Rome, Carthage, Athens, Lacedemon. Oh!

spare me! since I was a schoolboy, I could never _suffer_ those names.

Ah! M. le Comte, de grace!--I know I have put myself _in the case_ to be buried alive under a load of quotations."

The Count, with that good humour which disappoints ridicule, smiled, and checked his enthusiasm.

"Is there not a kind of enthusiasm," said Mrs. Percy, "which is as necessary to virtue as to genius?"

French Clay shook his head. He was sorry to differ from a lady; as a gallant man, he knew he was wrong, but as a philosopher he could not patronize enthusiasm. It was the business, he apprehended, of philosophy to correct and extinguish it.

"I have heard it said," interposed Rosamond, "that it is a favourite maxim of law, that the extreme of justice is the extreme of injustice--perhaps this maxim may be applied to philosophy as well as to law."

"Why extinguish enthusiasm?" cried Caroline. "It is not surely the business of philosophy to extinguish, but to direct it. Does not enthusiasm, well directed, give life and energy to all that is good and great?"

There was so much life and energy in Caroline's beautiful countenance, that French Clay was for a moment silenced by admiration.

"After all," resumed he, "there is one slight circ.u.mstance, which persons of feeling should consider, that the evils and horrors of war are produced by this very principle, which some people think so useful to mankind, this famous love of our country."

Count Altenberg asked, whether wars had not more frequently arisen from the unlawful fancies which princes and conquerors are apt to take for the territories of their neighbours, than from the legitimate love of their own country?

French Clay, hurried by a smile he saw on Rosamond's lips, changed his ground again for the worse, and said he was not speaking of wars, of foreign conquests, but of defensive wars, where foolish people, from an absurd love of their own country, that is, of certain barren mountains, of _a few acres of snow_, or of collections of old houses and churches, called capital cities, will expose themselves to fire, flame, and famine, and will stand to be cut to pieces inchmeal, rather than to submit to a conqueror, who might, ten to one, be a more civilized or cleverer sort of a person than their own rulers; and under whom they might enjoy all the luxuries of life--changing only the name of their country for some other equally well-sounding name; and perhaps adopting a few new laws, instead of what they might have been in the habit from their childhood of wors.h.i.+pping, as a wittenagemote, or a diet, or a const.i.tution. "For my part," continued French Clay, "I have accustomed myself to go to the bottom of things. I have _approfondied_. I have not suffered my understanding to be paralysed--I have made my own a.n.a.lysis of happiness, and find that your legislators, and moralists, and patriots, would juggle me out of many solid physical comforts, by engaging me to fight for enthusiasms which do me no manner of good."

Count Altenberg's countenance had flushed with indignation, and cooled with contempt, several times during Mr. Clay's Speech. Beginning in a low composed voice, he first answered, whatever pretence to reason it contained, in the a.n.a.lysis of human happiness, he observed, Mr. Clay had bounded his to physical comforts--this was reducing civilized man below even the savage, and nearly to the state of brutes. Did Mr. Clay choose to leave out all intellectual pleasures--all the pleasures of self-complacency, self-approbation, and sympathy? But, supposing that he was content to bound his happiness, inelegant and low, to such narrow limits, Count Altenberg observed, he did not provide for the security even of that poor portion. If he were ready to give up the liberty or the free const.i.tution of the country in which he resided, ready to live under tyrants and tyranny, how could he be secure for a year, a day, even an hour, of his epicurean paradise?

Mr. Clay acknowledged, that, "in this point of view, it might be awkward to live in a conquered country; but if a man has talents to make himself agreeable to the powers that be, and money in his purse, _that_ can never touch him, _chacun pour soi--et honi soit qui mal y pense_."

"Is it in England!--Oh! can it be in England, and from an Englishman, that I hear such sentiments!" exclaimed Count Altenberg. "Such I have heard on the continent--such we have heard the precursors of the ruin, disgrace, destruction of the princes and nations of Europe!"

Some painful reflections or recollections seemed to absorb the Count for a few moments.

"_Foi d'honnete homme et de philosophe_," French Clay declared, that, for his own part, he cared not who ruled or how, who was conqueror, or what was conquered, provided champagne and burgundy were left to him by the conqueror.

Rosamond thought it was a pity Mr. Clay was not married to the lady who said she did not care what revolutions happened, as long as she had her roast chicken, and her little game at cards.

"Happen what will," continued French Clay, "I have two hundred thousand pounds, well counted--as to the rest, it is quite indifferent to me, whether England be called England or France; for," concluded he, walking off to the committee of dress, "after all I have heard, I recur to my first question, what is country--or, as people term it, _their native land_?"

The following lines came full into Caroline's recollection as French Clay spoke:

"Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself has said, This is my own, my native land?

Whose heart has ne'er within him burn'd, As home his footsteps he hath turn'd, From wandering on a foreign strand?

If such there he, go, mark him well; High though his t.i.tles, proud his fame, Boundless his wealth, as wish can claim, Despite these t.i.tles, power and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living shall forfeit fair renown, And doubly dying shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung.

Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung."

Caroline asked Count Altenberg, who seemed well acquainted with English literature, if he had ever read Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel?

The Count smiled, and replied,

"'Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself has said'

any of those beautiful lines?"

Caroline, surprised that the Count knew so well what had pa.s.sed in her mind, blushed.

At this moment Mrs. Falconer returned, and throwing a reconnoitring glance round the room to see how the company had disposed of themselves, was well pleased to observe French Clay leaning on the back of Georgiana's chair, and giving her his opinion about some artificial flowers. The ladies had been consulting upon the manner in which the characters in "Love in a Village,"--or, "The Lord of the Manor," should be dressed, and Miss Arabella Falconer had not yet completely determined which piece or which dress she preferred. She was glad that the Percys had been kept from this committee, because, as they were not to be asked to the entertainment, it was a subject she could not discuss before them. Whenever they had approached the table, the young ladies had talked only of fas.h.i.+ons in general; and now, as Mrs. Percy and Caroline, followed by Count Altenberg, joined them, Mrs. Falconer put aside a volume of plays, containing "The Lord of the Manor," &c.; and, taking up another book, said something about the immortal bard to English Clay, who happened to be near her. He replied, "I have every edition of Shakspeare that ever was printed or published, and every thing that ever was written about him, good, bad, or indifferent, at Clay-hall. I made this a principle, and I think every Englishman should do the same.

_Your_ Mr. Voltaire," added this polite Englishman, turning to Count Altenberg, "made a fine example of himself by _das.h.i.+ng_ at _our_ Shakspeare?"

"Undoubtedly, Voltaire showed he did not understand Shakspeare, and therefore did not do him justice," replied Count Altenberg. "Even Voltaire had some tinge of national prejudice, as well as other men. It was reserved for women to set us, in this instance, as in many others, an example at once of superior candour and superior talent."

English Clay pulled up his boots, and, with a look of cool contempt, said, "I see you are a lady's man, monsieur."

Count Altenberg replied, that if a lady's man means an admirer of the fair s.e.x, he was proud to feel that he deserved that compliment; and with much warmth he p.r.o.nounced such a panegyric upon that s.e.x, without whom "_le commencement de la vie est sans secours, le milieu sans plaisir, et la fin sans consolation_," that even Lady Anne Arlington raised her head from the hand on which it reclined, and every female eye turned upon him with approbation.

"Oh! what a lover he will make, if ever he is in love," cried Lady Frances Arlington, who never scrupled saying any thing that came into her head. "I beg pardon, I believe I have said something very shocking.

Georgiana, my dear, I protest I was not thinking of--But what a disturbance I have made amongst all your faces, ladies--and _gentlemen_," repeated her ladys.h.i.+p, looking archly at the Count, whose face at this moment glowed manifestly; "and all because gentlemen and ladies don't mind their grammar and their tenses. Now don't you recollect--I call upon Mrs. Falconer, who really has some presence of--countenance--I call upon Mrs. Falconer to witness that I said 'if;'

and, pray comprehend me, M. le Comte, else I must appear excessively rude, I did not mean to say any thing of the present or the past, but only of the future."

The Count, recovering his presence of mind, and _presence_ of _countenance_, turned to a little Cupid on the mantel-piece; and, playfully doing homage before it, repeated,

"Qui que tu sois voici ton maitre, Il l'est, le fut--ou le doit etre."

"Oh! charming--oh! for a translation!" cried Mrs. Falconer, glad to turn the attention from Georgiana:--"Lady Frances--ladies some of you, Miss Percy, here's my pencil."