"And now for No.1," said she whom I so absolutely hated; "I think there is still enough for a pair of slippers.There's nothing so nice for the house as good black cloth slippers that are warm to the feet and don't show the dirt." And so saying, she spread out on the floor the lacerated remainders.
"There's a nice bit there," said young lady No.2, poking at one of the pockets with the end of her parasol.
"Yes," said the harpy, contemplating her plunder."But I'm thinking whether I couldn't get leggings as well.I always wear leggings in the thick of the winter." And so she concluded her operations, and there was nothing left but a melancholy skeleton of seams and buttons.
All this having been achieved, they pocketed their plunder and prepared to depart.There are people who have a wonderful appetite for relics.A stone with which Washington had broken a window when a boy--with which he had done so or had not, for there is little difference; a button that was on a coat of Napoleon's, or on that of one of his lackeys; a bullet said to have been picked up at Waterloo or Bunker's Hill; these, and suchlike things are great treasures.
And their most desirable characteristic is the ease with which they are attained.Any bullet or any button does the work.Faith alone is necessary.And now these ladies had made themselves happy and glorious with "Relics" of General Chasse cut from the ill-used habiliments of an elderly English gentleman!
They departed at last, and Mr.Horne, for once in an ill humour, followed me into the bedroom.Here I must be excused if I draw a veil over his manly sorrow at discovering what fate had done for him.Remember what was his position, unclothed in the Castle of Antwerp! The nearest suitable change for those which had been destroyed was locked up in his portmanteau at the Hotel de Belle Rue in Brussels! He had nothing left to him--literally nothing, in that Antwerp world.There was no other wretched being wandering then in that Dutch town so utterly denuded of the goods of life.For what is a man fit,--for what can he be fit,--when left in such a position? There are some evils which seem utterly to crush a man;and if there be any misfortune to which a man may be allowed to succumb without imputation on his manliness, surely it is such as this.How was Mr.Horne to return to his hotel without incurring the displeasure of the municipality? That was my first thought.
He had a cloak, but it was at the inn; and I found that my friend was oppressed with a great horror at the idea of being left alone;so that I could not go in search of it.There is an old saying, that no man is a hero to his valet de chambre, the reason doubtless being this, that it is customary for his valet to see the hero divested of those trappings in which so much of the heroic consists.
Who reverences a clergyman without his gown, or a warrior without his sword and sabre-tasche? What would even Minerva be without her helmet?
I do not wish it to be understood that I no longer reverenced Mr.
Horne because he was in an undress; but he himself certainly lost much of his composed, well-sustained dignity of demeanour.He was fearful and querulous, cold, and rather cross.When, forgetting his size, I offered him my own, he thought that I was laughing at him.
He began to be afraid that the story would get abroad, and he then and there exacted a promise that I would never tell it during his lifetime.I have kept my word; but now my old friend has been gathered to his fathers, full of years.
At last I got him to the hotel.It was long before he would leave the castle, cloaked though he was;--not, indeed, till the shades of evening had dimmed the outlines of men and things, and made indistinct the outward garniture of those who passed to and fro in the streets.Then, wrapped in his cloak, Mr.Horne followed me along the quays and through the narrowest of the streets; and at length, without venturing to return the gaze of any one in the hotel court, he made his way up to his own bedroom.
Dinnerless and supperless he went to his couch.But when there he did consent to receive some consolation in the shape of mutton cutlets and fried potatoes, a savory omelet, and a bottle of claret.
The mutton cutlets and fried potatoes at the Golden Fleece at Antwerp are--or were then, for I am speaking now of well-nigh thirty years since--remarkably good; the claret, also, was of the best; and so, by degrees, the look of despairing dismay passed from his face, and some scintillations of the old fire returned to his eyes.
"I wonder whether they find themselves much happier for what they have got?" said he.
"A great deal happier," said I."They'll boast of those things to all their friends at home, and we shall doubtless see some account of their success in the newspapers.""It would be delightful to expose their blunder,--to show them up.
Would it not, George? To turn the tables on them?""Yes," said I, "I should like to have the laugh against them.""So would I, only that I should compromise myself by telling the story.It wouldn't do at all to have it told at Oxford with my name attached to it."To this also I assented.To what would I not have assented in my anxiety to make him happy after his misery?
But all was not over yet.He was in bed now, but it was necessary that he should rise again on the morrow.At home, in England, what was required might perhaps have been made during the night; but here, among the slow Flemings, any such exertion would have been impossible.Mr.Horne, moreover, had no desire to be troubled in his retirement by a tailor.