Charles James Lever

“ As that bland young gentleman so candidly told me, “I was a nobody,” and, consequently, of no interest to any one. Who would think of sending out an express messenger to ransom Paul Gosslett? At all events, I could console myself with the thought that if the world would give little for me, it would grieve even less; and with this not very cheering consolation I mounted to the banquette of the diligence, and started.
After passing through a long, straggling suburb, not remarkable for anything but its squalor and poverty, we reached the seashore, and continued to skirt the bay for miles. ”

“ I was sound asleep, though the noise of the storm was actually deafening, when Lizzy again tapped at my door, and at last, opening it slightly, pushed a lighted candle inside, and disappeared. If there be a dreary thing in life, it is to get up before day of a dark, raw morning, in a room destitute of all comfort and convenience, and proceed to wash and dress in cold, gloom, and misery, with the consciousness that what you are about to do not only might be safer and better undone, but may, and not at all improbably will, turn out the rashest act of your life. ”

“ If I must enter the public service, thought I, at the peril of my neck, better to turn to some other means of living. Then I grew sardonic and malicious, declaring to myself how like a rich man it was to offer such an employment to a poor man, as though, when existence had so little to charm, one could not hold to it with any eagerness. The people, muttered I, who throw these things to us so contemptuously are careful enough of themselves. You never find one of them risk his life, no, nor even peril his health, in any enterprise. ”

“ I want an honest, sober, fixed determination,—no caprice, no passing fancy. Do you believe you are capable of turning over a new leaf, and sitting down steadily to the business of life, like a patient, industrious, respectable man who desires to earn his own bread, and not live on the earnings of others?”
“I hope so.” “Don't tell me of hope, sir. Say you will, or you will not”
“I will,” said I, resolutely.
“You will work hard, rise early, live frugally, give up dreaming about this, that, or the other chance, and set to like a fellow that wants to do his own work with his own hands?” ”

“ As I looked over the gunwale, I saw a huge strong fellow rush down the slope, and breasting the waves as they beat, approach the boat. Lizzy sprang into his arms at once, and he carried her back to land triumphantly. I suppose at any other moment a pang of jealousy might have shot through me. Much sea-sickness, like perfect love, overcometh all things. ”

“ Before I went to bed that night I studied the map of Calabria thoroughly, and saw that by taking the diligence to Atri the next day I should reach Valdenone by about four o'clock, from which a guide could conduct me to Rocco d'Anco,—a mountain walk of about sixteen miles,—a feat which my pedestrian habits made me fully equal to. If the young attache's attempt to terrorize over me was not a perfect success, I am free to own that my enterprise appeared to me a more daring exploit than I had believed it when I thought of it in Piccadilly. ”

“ If the people really were busy, they went about their affairs in a half-lounging, half-jocular humor, as though they wouldn't be selling hides, or shipping pigs, or landing sugar hogsheads, if they had anything else to do,—as if trade was a dirty necessity, and the only thing was to get through with it with as little interruption as possible to the pleasanter occupations of life. ”

“ To my own thinking, it would be as truthful to declare that there was no element of luck in whist, as to say there was no such thing as luck in life. Now, all the “prudentia” in the world will not give a man four by honors; and though a good player may make a better fight with a bad hand than an indifferent performer, there is that amount of badness occasionally dealt out that no skill can compensate; and do what he may, he must lose the game.
Now, I am by no means about to set up as a model of prudence, industry, or perseverance ”

“ Doctors assure us that savage nations, amidst whom the wants of life call for daily, hourly efforts, amidst whom all is exigency, activity, and resource, have no dyspepsia. If, then, I had reasoned on my condition,—which I did not,—I should have seen that the world went too smoothly with me, and that, in consequence, my health suffered. Just as the fish swallow stones to aid the digestion, we need the accidents and frictions of life to triturate our moral pabulum, and render it more easily assimilable to our constitutions. With dyspepsia I grew dull, dispirited, and dissatisfied. ”

“ Days would often pass now without Mrs. Dacre permitting me to visit her, and then Virginie significantly hinted that she was right in this,—that it was for my good as well as her own, and so on. I mourned over my banishment and bewailed it bitterly. “One would think, sir, you forget my mistress was married,” said Virginie to me one day; and I protest it was no more than the truth. I had completely, utterly forgotten it; and the stern fact thus abruptly announced almost felled me to the earth. ”

“ If the great thinkers—the men of lofty intellects and high-soaring faculties—were but to know how, in vindicating the claims of every-day people to respect and regard, in shielding them from the sneers of smart men and the quips of witty men, they were doing a great and noble work, for which millions of people like myself would bless them, I am certain we should find many more such kindly utterances as that of the great Sir Walter. ”

“ Am I a fit subject for a fraud,—a—a freedom, sir? Is it to a house which displays the royal arms over the entrance-door men come to play blackleg or clown? Where have you lived, with whom have you lived, what pursuit in life have you followed, that you should be sunk in such utter ignorance of all the habits of life and civilization? ”

“ I do not think I would have the right to induce a poor man to peril his life, and the support of those who depend upon him, for my own—what shall I call it?—my own gratification,—that might be for a picnic;—my own,—no, not happiness, because that is a term of time and continuity;—my own—There goes a chimney, as sure as fate! How they sleep here through everything! There 's that fellow who minds the cows snoring through it all in the loft overhead ”

“ If I am to depend on my good fortune, it will be a bad look-out for me.”
“Not that I value what is called luck a rush,” cried he, with energy. “I have had luck, but I had energy, industry, thrift, and perseverance. If I had waited for luck, I 'd have lived pretty much like yourself, and I don't know anything to be very proud of in that, eh?”
“I am certainly not proud of my position, sir.”
“I don't understand what you mean by your position; but I know I 'd have been a coal-heaver rather than live on my relations. I 'd have sold sulphur matches, I 'd have been a porter!” ”

“ The sense of being deemed universally an unlucky fellow is one of the most depressing things imaginable,—to feel that your presence is accounted an evil agency,—and that your co-operation foreshadows failure,—goes a considerable way towards accomplishing the prediction announced.
Though my uncle's stereotyped recommendation to become a coal-heaver was not exactly to my taste, I had serious thoughts of buying a sack, and by a little private practice discovering whether the profession might not in the end become endurable. ”

“ My house dinners, which once I took an especial pride in, seeking not only that the wines and the cookery should be excellent, but that their success as social gatherings should attract notoriety, I now regarded with apathy. I took no pains about either company or cookery, and, in consequence, contrarieties and bad contrasts now prevailed, where, before, all had been in perfect keeping and true artistic shading. My indolence and indifference extended to those beneath me. Where all had once been order, discipline, and propriety, there now grew up carelessness, disorder, and neglect. ”

“ The Basilicata, in fact, was no longer 'the mode;' and every brigand who had any sense of dignity had betaken himself to the mountains below Atri. Fra Bartolo's account of Stoppa was not so encouraging that I cared to follow him there. He had taken a fancy, of late, for sending the noses as well as the ears of the captives to their friends at Naples, and I shrank from contributing my share to this interesting collection; and it was then it occurred to me to pretend I had been captured, and arrange the terms of my own ransom. ”

“ I suppose I must have shown some signs of the rapture that was consuming me, for the maid said,—“What does the man mean? has he lost his senses?”
“I must examine the part,” said I; and, kneeling down, I proceeded with what I imagined to be a most chirurgical air, to investigate the injury. As a worshipper might have touched a holy relic, I suffered my hand to glide over that beautifully rounded instep, but all so delicately and gently that I could not say whether the thrill that touch sent through me was not the act of my own nerves. ”

“ Why, she knows well enough I have nothing to engage my activity and industry, for I will not be a coal-heaver, let uncle say what he likes. Aunt surmises that possibly some tender sentiment may be at the bottom of my attachment to Ireland, and sternly recalls me to the fact that I am not the possessor of landed property and an ancient family mansion in a good county. What can she mean by these warnings? Was it not herself that I overheard asking my uncle, “Would not he do for Lizzy?” How false women are! ”

“ MacNamara with R. St. John, Esq., the then Secretary of Legation at Rio. This piece of news gave me much matter of reflection as to my unhappy victim, and has also enabled me to unseal my lips about the bridegroom, of whom I knew something once before.
The man who is always complaining is the terror of his friends; hence, if nothing but bad luck attend we, I shall trouble the world no more with my Confessions; if Fate, however, should be pleased to smile ever so faintly on me, you shall hear once more from poor Paul Gosslett. ”

“ I even doubt if I can be a warning, for when a man is as miserably unlucky as I have proved myself, the natural inference is to regard him as the exception to the ordinary lot of mortals,—a craft fated to founder ere it was launched. It's all very well to deny the existence of such a thing as luck. ”

“ I cannot lay my hand on it, and may spoil it in the attempt to quote, but the purport is, that one day when Lockhart had used the word “vulgar” in criticising the manners of some people they had been discussing, Sir Walter rebuked him for the mistaken sense he had ascribed to the expression. Vulgar, said he, is only common, and common means general; and what is the general habit and usage of mankind has its base and foundation in a feeling and sentiment that we must not lightly censure. It is, at all events, human. ”

“ I was, however, too full of my mission now to suffer my thoughts to wander to the picturesque, and so I made straight for the Legation.
I had been told that I should receive my last instructions from H.M.'s Minister, and it was a certain Sir James Magruber that then held that office at Naples. I know so very little of people in his peculiar walk, that I can only hope he may not be a fair sample of his order; for he was the roughest, the rudest, and most uncourteous gentleman it has ever been my fortune to meet. ”

“ They 'll not easily find a man of good private fortune, willing to spend his money here, like Gosslett,” and such like, till I vow and declare I began to believe my own fiction, and regard it as an indelible fact. If my letter was not on record, I would not now believe the fact; but the document exists, and I have seen it, where I actually threaten to send my resignation if something—I forget what—is not speedily conceded to my demands; and it was only on receiving an admonition in the mild vein peculiar to my uncle that I awoke to a sense of my peril, and of what became me. ”

“ If habit and daily use deaden the pangs of suffering, and enable us to bear with more of patience the sorrows of adverse fortune, they, on the other hand, serve to dull the generous warmth of that gratitude we first feel for benefits, and render us comparatively indifferent to enjoyments which, when first tasted, seemed the very ecstasy of bliss. ”

“ Will they know,—in one word,—will they know the man they have suffered to perish in the midst of them?” My one gleam of comfort was the unavailing regret I should leave to a world that had neglected me. ”

“ He arose as he spoke, and swept the coin into a bag which he wore at his side. Still, thought I, he might tell me something more about these brigands. Are they partisans of the Bourbons, or are they mere highwaymen? Here is a man fully equal to the discussion of such a question. Shall I ask him to decide the matter?
“I see,” said he, laughing, as I propounded my mystery; “you want to make a book about us. But our people don't understand that sort of curiosity; they distrust, and they occasionally resent it. Stay a week or ten days where you are. ”