Charles James Lever

“ Only to be found where youth—bright, joyous, and elastic youth-unites itself to beauty.
Such were my thoughts as the dancers flew past, and many whom I had remarked at the beginning of the evening as handsome and attractive, seemed now without a trace of either—when suddenly Louisa Bellew came by, her step as light, her every gesture as graceful, her cheek as blooming, and her liquid eye as deeply beaming as when first I saw her. The excitement of the dance had slightly flushed her face, and heightened the expression its ever-varying emotions lent it. ”

“ What a pity it is that good-nature is underbred, and good-feeling is vulgarity; for, after all, while I contrasted the tone of everything around me with the supercilious cant and unimpassioned coldness of London manners, I could not but confess to myself that the difference was great and the interval enormous. To which side my own heart inclined, it needed not my affection for Louisa Bellew to tell me; yes, I had seen enough of life to learn how far are the real gifts of worth and excellence preferable to the adventitious polish of high society. ”

“ Yes, Hinton, these are my sporting friends, sipping my wine while they plot my ruin. Conviviality with them is not the happy abandonment to good fellowship and enjoyment, but the season of cold and studied calculation—the hour when, unexcited themselves, they trade upon the unguarded and unwary feelings of others. They know how imperative is the code of honour as regards a bet, and they make a virtue to themselves in the unflinching firmness of their exaction, as a cruel judge would seek applause for the stern justice with which he condemns a felon. ”

“ While such was Paul, his accessoires—as the French would call them—were in admirable keeping: a dark chesnut cob, a perfect model of strength and symmetry, would be led up and down by a groom, also mounted upon a strong hackney, whose flat rib and short pastern showed his old Irish breeding; the well-fitting saddle, the well-balanced stirrup, the plain but powerful snaffle, all looked like the appendages of one whose jockeyism was no assumed feature; and, indeed, you had only to see Mr. Rooney in his seat, to confess that he was to the full as much at home there as in the Court of Chancery. ”

“ Unlike my fair cousin, Lady Julia, her raillery never wounded: hers were the fanciful combinations which a vivid and sparkling imagination conjures up, but never the barbed and bitter arrows of sarcasm. Catching up in a second any passing absurdity, she could laugh at the scene, yet seem to spare the actor. Julia, on the contrary, with what the French call l'esprit moqueur, never felt that her wit had hit its mark till she saw her victim writhing and quivering beneath her.
There is always something in being the partner of the belle of a ball-room. ”

“ It was this: the sudden vicissitudes of everyday life in Ireland are sadly unsuited to our English natures and habits of thought and action. These changes from grave to gay, these outbreaks of high-souled enthusiasm followed by dark, reflective traits of brooding thought, these noble impulses of good, these events of more than tragic horror, demand a changeful, even a forgetful temperament to bear them; and while the Irishman rises or falls with every emergency of his fate, with us impressions are eating deeper and deeper into our hearts, and we become sad and thoughtful, and prematurely old. ”

“ He turned towards the priest, and the same moment I held Miss Bellow's hand in mine. Dressed in white, and with her hair plainly braided on her cheek, I thought she looked handsomer than I had ever seen her. There was an air of assured calmness in her manner that sat well upon her lovely features, as, with a tone of winning sweetness, she seconded the words of her father, and welcomed me to Kilmorran.
The first step in the knowledge of the female heart is to know how to interpret any constraint or reserve of manner on the part of the woman you are in love with. ”

“ Were it not better, like Louisa Bellew, to have passed her days amid the simple, unexciting scenes of secluded life, than to have purchased all the brilliancy of her wit and the dazzle of her genius at the price of true womanly delicacy and refinement? While I asked and answered myself these questions to the satisfaction of my own heart, I could not dismiss the thought, that amid such scenes as London presented, with such associates as fashion necessitated, the unprotected simplicity of Miss Bellew's character would expose her to much both of raillery and coldness ”

“ I feel how sadly inadequate I am to render even the faintest testimony to the talents of those, any one of whom, in after life, would have been considered to have made the fortune of a dinner-party, and who now were met together, not in the careless ease and lounging indifference of relaxation, but in the open arena where wit met wit, and where even the most brilliant talker, the happiest relater, the quickest in sarcasm, and the readiest in reply, felt he had need of all his weapons to defend and protect him. ”

“ I sprang forward to speak to her, and then became rooted to the ground. It was she, indeed, as beautiful as ever; her pale face wore the very look I had last seen the night I saved her from the flood.
'Did you observe her companion?' said O'Grady, who fortunately had not noticed my confusion. 'It was De Vere. I knew he was here; and I suspect I see his plans.'
'De Vere!' said I, starting. 'De Vere with Miss Bellew! Are you certain?'
'Quite certain; I seldom mistake a face, and his I can't forget. But here's Guillemain. ”

“ With some men failure is a question of fear; some want the persevering courage to drag on amid trials and difficulties; and some are deficient in the temper which, subduing our actions to a law, governs and presides over every moment of our lives, rendering us, even in our periods of excitement and irritation, amenable to the guidance of our reason. This was my case; and I felt that notwithstanding all my wishes to avoid a quarrel with Burke, yet in my heart a lurking spirit urged me to seek him out and offer him defiance. ”

“ Towards ten o'clock I received more than one hint from O'Grady that we had promised to take tea at the Place Vendôme; while I myself was manoeuvring to find out, if we were to adjourn for coffee, what prospect there might be of seeing Louisa Bellew in the drawing-room.
It was in that dusky twilight we sat, a time which seems so suited to the quiet enjoyment of one's claret with a small and chosen party; where intimacy prevails sufficiently to make conversation more a thing of choice than necessity ”

“ The fun of a man's temperament is like the froth on your champagne; while it gives a zest to the liquor of life by its lightness and its sparkle, it neither detracts from the flavour nor the strength of the beverage. At the same time, when I begin to froth up, don't expect me to sober down before twenty-four hours. So take your hat, come along into town, and thank your stars that you have been able to delight the heart of a man who's trying to get a bill discounted. Now hear me, Jack,' said he, as we descended the stairs ”

“ A fit of coughing, that almost convinced me that Corny had given his last curse, followed this burst of eloquence, just as I appeared at the door.
“What's the matter, Corny?”
“The matter?—ugh, ain't I coughing my soul out with a wheezing and whistling in my chest like a creel of chickens. Here's Mr. Rooney wanting to see ye; and faith,” as he added in an under tone, “if s not long you wor in making his acquaintance. That's his room,” added he, with a jerk of his thumb. “Now lave the way if you plase, and let me got a howld of the banisters.” ”

“ There were times when I loved to ask myself whether Louisa Bellew would not, even amid all the splendour and display of London life, be as much admired and courted as the most acknowledged of beauty's daughters: now I turned rather to the thought of how far happier and better it was to know that a nature so unhackneyed, a heart so rich in its own emotions, was never to be exposed to the callous collision of society and all the hardened hypocrisy of the world. ”

“ Speak to every one—half the men in the room answer to the name of “Bob,” and all the young ladies are “Miss Magees.” Then go it, my boy; this is a great night for Ireland!'
This happy land, indeed, which, like a vast powder-magazine, only wants but the smallest spark to ignite it, is always prepared for an explosion of fun. No sooner than did O'Grady, taking out the fattest woman in the room, proceed to lead her down the middle to the liveliest imaginable country-dance, than at once the contagious spirit flew through the room, and dancers pressed in from every side. ”

“ In an instant, however, I tore myself away; and calling out, 'Wait for me, O'Grady!' I rushed upstairs, peeped hastily into the drawing-room, and then hurrying along the corridor opened a door at the end. The blinds of the windows were down, and the room so dark that I could scarcely perceive if any one were there had not my steps been guided by a low sob which I heard issue from the end of the sofa.
'Julia,' said I, rushing forward—'Julia, my dearest cousin! this is no time to deceive ourselves. He loves you—loved you from the first hour he met you. Let me have but one word. ”

“ Alas, how hard it is to be happy! The casualties of this world come on like waves, one succeeding the other. We may escape the heavy roll of the mighty ocean, and be wrecked in the still, smooth waters of the landlocked bay. We dread the storm and the hurricane, and we forget how many have perished within sight of shore. But yet a secret fear is ever present with us when danger hovers near; and this sense of some impending evil it was which now darkened me, and whispered me to be prepared.
I lay for some time sunk in my reflections, and when I looked up, the priest was gone. ”

“ Accustomed as I had been all my life to the rigid observances of etiquette in female society, nothing surprised me so much as the rapid steps by which Irish ladies passed from acquaintance to intimacy, from intimacy to friendship. The unsuspecting kindliness of woman's nature has certainly no more genial soil than in the heart of Erin's daughters. There is besides, too, a winning softness in their manner towards the stranger of another land that imparts to their hospitable reception a tone of courteous warmth I have never seen in any other country. ”

“ Nothing was too grave for a jest, nothing too solemn for a sarcasm. All the soldier's experience of men and manners, all the lawyer's acuteness of perception and readiness of wit, all the politician's practised tact and habitual subtlety, were brought to bear upon the common topics of the day with such promptitude, and such power, that one knew not whether to be more struck by the mass of information they possessed, or by that strange fatality which could make men, so great and so gifted, satisfied to jest where they might be called on to judge. ”

“ So I found it amid this scene of horror and anguish, with everything to excite that can operate upon the mind—the woman stricken motionless and senseless by grief; the dead man, as it were, recalled to life by the words that were to herald him into life everlasting; the old man, whom I had known but as a gay companion, displayed now before my eyes in all the workings of his feeling heart, called up by the afflictions of one world and the terrors of another—and this in a wild and dreary valley, far from man's dwelling. ”

“ I saw nothing, I heeded nothing, of the bright looks and laughing faces that passed me; scornful pity and contempt for one so low as I was seemed to prevail in every face I looked at. A strange impulse to seek out Lord Dudley de Vere was uppermost in my mind; and as I turned on every side to find him, I felt my arm grasped tightly, and heard O'Grady's voice in my ear—
'Be calm, Jack, for heaven's sake! Your disturbed looks make every one stare at you.'
He drew me along with him through the crowd, and at length reached a card-room, where, except the players, no one was present. ”

“ Paul Rooney (there seemed something distinctive in the prenom.) —was a being of a very different order. Perfectly unconscious of the ridicule that attaches to vulgar profusion, she believed herself the great source of attraction of her crowded staircase and besieged drawing-room. True it was, she was a large and very handsome woman. Her deep, dark, brown eyes, and brilliant complexion, would have been beautiful, had not her mouth somewhat marred their effect, by that coarse expression which high living and a voluptuous life is sure to impress upon those not born to be great. ”

“ Every day furnished its share, its quota of merriment. Epigrams, good stories, repartees, and practical jokes rained in showers over the land. A privy council was a conversazione of laughing bishops and droll chief-justices. Every trial at the bar, every dinner at the court, every drawing-room, afforded a theme for some ready-witted absurdity; and all the graver business of life was carried on amid this current of unceasing fun and untiring drollery, just as we see the serious catastrophe of a modern opera assisted by the crash of an orchestral accompaniment. ”

“ On the whole, the journey was to me a delightful one, and certainly not the least pleasant portion of my life in Ireland. Endowed—partly from his individual gifts, partly from the nature of his sacred functions—with influence over all the humble ranks in life, the good priest jogged along with the assurance of a hearty welcome wherever he pleased to halt—the only look of disappointment being when he declined some proffered civility, or refused an invitation to delay his journey. ”