Briseis

“ One Sunday evening, as all the family were seated round a large fire eating some small loaves which had been brought from Senegal, a negro from the main land gave my father a letter; it was from M. Renaud, Surgeon-Major at Bakal in Galam, announcing to us, to complete the sum of our misfortunes, that the merchandize he had sent to Galam the preceding year had been entirely consumed by fire. "Now," cried my unhappy father, "my ruin is complete! Nothing more wretched can touch us. You see, my dear children, that Fortune has not ceased persecuting us. ”

“ The tumult of the child's entrance had the effect of relaxing for Briscoe the tension of the situation, but when Archie's nurse appeared at the door and he ran away at her summons, the host looked apprehensively about the circle as the party ranged themselves around the fire, its glow beginning to be welcome in the increasing chill of the evening. Ordinarily, this was a household of hilarious temperament. Life had been good to the Briscoes, and they loved it. They were fond of rich viands, old wines, genial talk, good stories, practical jests, music, and sport ”

“ What's the matter with poor Briss?"
"That's exactly what I thought you might be able to tell me. But if nothing, in him, strikes you——!"
He met my eyes a moment—then glanced about. "Where is he?"
"Behind you; only don't turn round to look, for he knows——" But I dropped, having caught something directed toward me in Brissenden's face. My interlocutor remained blank, simply asking me, after an instant, what it was he knew. On this I said what I meant. "He knows we've noticed."
Long wondered again. "Ah, but I haven't!" He spoke with some sharpness. ”

“ Thus did fortune elect to smile upon the Boy Artist of the San Saba. Fate had already done her share when she arranged his atoms in the cosmogony of creation as the grandson of Lucien Briscoe.
The original Briscoe had been a pioneer both as to territorial occupation and in certain acts prompted by a great and simple heart. He had been one of the first settlers and crusaders against the wild forces of nature, the savage and the shallow politician. ”

“ The more fools they! The merest scrawl with his signature now brought hundreds of francs, and there were those of his blood still in the town with whom the francs were scarce enough. To obtain a serious picture had of course been no small affair, and little M—, though with the yearning heart of a mother, happened to have no scanty maternal savings. Yet the thing had been managed by subscription, and the picture paid for. To make the triumph complete, a fortnight after it had been hung on its nail, M. Briseux succumbs to a fever in Rome and his pictures rise to the most fantastic prices! ”

“ At 10 A.M. on the 4th May 1811, la Belle Poule, being on a cruise off the coast of Istria, in company with the Alceste frigate, discovered and chased a French 18-gun brig into the small harbour of Parenza. Having received intelligence that such a vessel might be expected conveying supplies of all descriptions for the French frigates which had escaped into Ragusa, after their action with a British squadron off Lissa [9] , Captain Brisbane felt that no means should be left untried to capture or destroy her. ”

“ We will come right up to the present if we go through Bristol. There we shall have a whiff of America, our new find, from which the tobacco comes, and we shall be reminded of how we set sail thither—was it yesterday or the day before? You will understand at Bristol how it is that the energy has gone out of this dreaming land—to Africa and America and the whole wide world. It was the good men of Bristol, by the bye, with their trade from Africa to America, who gave you your colour problem. ”

“ Briss; but my renewed impression had suddenly made the difference. If that was the way he struck me, how might not, if I could get at her, she? And she might, after all, in the privacy at last offered us by empty rooms, be waiting for me. I went through them all, however, only to find them empty indeed. In conformity with the large allowances of every sort that were the law of Newmarch, they were still open and lighted, so that if I had believed in Mrs. Briss's reappearance I might conveniently, on the spot, have given her five minutes more. ”

“ As our family had become more numerous since the second marriage of my father, he could only take with him our stepmother and the younger children. My sister Caroline and myself were placed in a boarding school at Paris, until the Minister of Marine and the Colonies would grant us a passage; but the events of 1815 caused the expedition to Senegal to be abandoned, while it was still in the harbour of Brest, and all the officers dismissed. My father then returned to Paris, leaving at Brest my stepmother, who was then in an unfit condition for travelling. ”

“ Yes, literally, that final note, in the smoking-room, the note struck in Obert's ejaculation on poor Briss's hundred years, had failed to achieve for me a worthy implication. I was forced, after looking at Grace Brissenden a minute, to recognise that my imagination had not risen to its opportunity. The full impression took a minute—a minute during which she said nothing; then it left me deeply and above all, as I felt, discernibly conscious of the prodigious thing, the thing, I had not thought of. ”

“ Briscoe, “I had the name of it, when I was younger—before Briscoe failed, and I took to nursing; which it hardens, sir, by use, and along of the patients themselves; for sick folk are lumps of selfishness; we see more of them than you do, sir. But this I WILL say, 'tisn't selfishness that lies now in that room, waiting for the blow that will bring her to death's door, I'm sore afraid; but a sweet, gentle, thoughtful creature, as ever supped sorrow; for I don't know how 'tis, doctor, nor why 'tis, but an angel like that has always to sup sorrow.” ”

“ Their worthy commander, M. Espiau, had no other hope but of reaching the shore as soon as possible. The other boats were less filled with people, but they were scarcely better provisioned; and, as by a species of fatality, the pinnace, in which were our family, was destitute of every thing. Our provisions consisted of a barrel of biscuit, and a tierce of water; and, to add to our misfortunes, the biscuit being soaked in the sea, it was almost impossible to swallow one morsel of it. ”

“ When I raised my eyes Briseux stood before me, and from the expression of his face I could have fancied he had guessed at the meaning of Harold's words. "I'll make you immortal," he murmured; "I'll delight mankind—and I'll begin my own career!" ”

“ He had once travelled for two days on the same railway train with him, and remembered him as a boastful but powerful man, whose antagonism no one held in light esteem. Andrew Brisbane had entered the State at a time when its mineral wealth lay undeveloped and free to the taker, and having leagued himself with men less masterly than himself but quite as unscrupulous, had set to work to grasp and hold the natural resources of the great Territory—he laid strong fists upon the mines and forests and grass of the wild land. ”

“ For some passage that would soon be a correction of this, however, one might surely feel that one could trust them. I seemed to feel my trust justified, behind my back, before I had got twenty yards away. By the time I had done this, I must add, something further had befallen me. Poor Briss had met my eyes just previous to my flight, and it was then I satisfied myself of what had happened to him at the house. He had met his wife; she had in some way dealt with him; he had been with her, however briefly, alone; and the intimacy of their union had been afresh impressed upon him. ”

“ Every one had heard of the Yellow Shawl; people talked of it as they did of the Chapeau de Paille of Rubens or the "Torn Glove" of Titian; or if they didn't, posterity would! Such was the discursive murmur of the concierge as I examined this precious specimen of Briseux's first manner; and there was a plaintive cadence in this last assurance, which seemed to denote a too vivid prevision of the harvest of tributary francs to be reaped by his successors in office. It would be graceless praise to say that a glimpse of the picture is worth your franc. ”

“ I have requested the man who represents my sovereign in this country, to give me the rations to which I have a right; but he has had the inhumanity to refuse. But what of that? I know how to submit, and my family also." Major Peddie, at these words, touched with our misfortunes, and vexed, doubtless, at having mortified us, though that certainly was not his intention, bade us good bye, and retired. Early on the morning of next day, we received a visit from M. Dubois, mayor of the town of St Louis in Senegal. ”

“ Brixey started forward. In his observations of the big sheet of water behind the Priory grounds he had noticed the small, thickly-wooded island of which the policeman spoke, and now a sudden light flashed field of mental vision. He clapped the inspector on the shoulder.
"Come on at once!" he exclaimed. "I've an idea what that means. Come! Bring more men. Get this man outside to show us the nearest way."
Ten minutes later at the head of half a dozen men, Brixey was standing on the edge of the black surface of the lake, striving to penetrate the gloom. ”

“ Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once,—there where grow still the apple-trees which Brister planted and tended; large old trees now, but their fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste. Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”—Scipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—“a man of color,” as if he were discolored. ”

“ I added. "Could you ever have finished my portrait?"
He looked at me askance for some moments, with a strange mistrust, as if I had suddenly developed some monstrous and sinister slyness; then catching his breath with a little groan—almost a shudder—he marched out of the room.
Briseux clasped his hands in ecstasy. "You're magnificent!" he cried. "If you could only look so for three hours!"
"To business," I said sternly. "If you don't paint a perfect picture, you're the most shameless of impostors." ”

“ Take care what you do in Bristol; it is full of people, and some of them are bad enough. So take care, for you know you are—well, you have only to look in a glass to see. Good-bye, Bryda, I won't come up to the door.'
Bryda found Mrs Lambert only half awake in her easy-chair, with the best china teacups and a small teapot before her. Blair's sermons and the port wine together had caused a prolonged slumber, and Sam had brought in the tray all unobserved at five o'clock. ”

“ Briss—have been in the spirit of this from the moment that, while I talked with Lady John, the sight of these two seated together had given me its message! But Obert's answer to my guarded challenge had meanwhile come. "Oh, when a woman's so clever⸻!"
That was all, with its touch of experience and its hint of philosophy; but it was stupefying. She was already then positively again "so clever?" This was really more than I could as yet provide an explanation for, but I was pressed; Brissenden would have reached his wife's room again, and I temporised. ”

“ Slim. 'Ad best clo'es 's good as anybody. 'At--silk 'at, mind you." Mr. Brisher's hand shot above his head towards the infinite to indicate it silk hat of the highest. "Umbrella--nice umbrella with a 'orn 'andle. Savin's. Very careful I was. . . ."
He was pensive for a little while, thinking, as we must all come to think sooner or later, of the vanished brightness of youth. But he refrained, as one may do in taprooms, from the obvious moral.
"I got to know 'er through a chap what was engaged to 'er sister. She was stopping in London for a bit with an aunt that 'ad a 'am an' beef shop. ”

“ Lee, whose presence Briscoe had ignored, began to pace the room the moment his brother-in-law's eyes were shut. The stealthy, cat-like glance which he threw at Briscoe expanded to a blaze of triumph as, in one of his turns across the floor, he seized both portmanteaus, and, without accelerating his pace, walked into the unoccupied bedroom, the door of which he locked as softly as he could. Being relieved by Lee's withdrawal, Briscoe gave himself a shake on the sofa, and proceeded with his cogitation. ”

“ Bristol has always been foremost in hero-worship, though too often the Dagon at whose feet it has lain has, like Mr Wilkes, been a poor creature after all, and has fallen from his pedestal and broken himself to pieces. ”

“ Oneself.—He Is Sent to Get Himself Made a Duke Elsewhere.
The Abbe de Brisacier, the famous director of consciences, possessed enough friends and credit to advance young Brisacier, his nephew, to the Queen's household, to whom he had been made private secretary. Slanderers or impostors had persuaded this young coxcomb that Casimir, the King of Poland, whilst dwelling in Paris in the quality of a simple gentleman, had shown himself most assiduous to Madame Brisacier, and that he, Brisacier of France, was born of these assiduities of the Polish prince. ”

“ Brice, the bookseller Guerin, a man of wit, learning, of an amiable disposition, and one of the first in his profession. He brought me acquainted with Jean Neaulme, bookseller of Amsterdam, his friend and correspondent, who afterwards printed Emilius.
I had another acquaintance still nearer than St. Brice, this was M. Maltor, vicar of Groslay, a man better adapted for the functions of a statesman and a minister, than for those of the vicar of a village, and to whom a diocese at least would have been given to govern if talents decided the disposal of places. ”