THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP. ས་: 37 3. 3Y W. M. THACKERAY. Charlotte, and I dare say her little brothers jumped and danced on the box with much ener FEINE LOIRE, AND gy to make the lid shut, and the general brought out his hammer and nails, and nailed a card on tear friend the box with "Mademoiselle Baynes" thereon 1 Baynes printed. And mamma had to look on and witing an- ness those preparations. And Hely Walsingence of ham had called; and he wouldn't call again, i use panics she knew; and that fair chance for the estabsometimes lishment of her child was lost by the obstinacy zer, and dur- of her self-willed, reckless husband. That woen she re- man had to water her soup with her furtive tears, er hus- to sit of nights behind hearts and spades and 118 obedi- brood over her crushed hopes. If I contemplate and vas- that wretched old Niobe much longer I shall been 3avnes gin to pity her. Away softness! Take out thy ex- arrows, the poisoned, the barbed, the rankling, unte- and prod me the old creature well, god of the ave said silver bow! Eliza Baynes had to look on, then, e new and see the trunks packed-to see her own auese- thority over her own daughter wrested away from xpres her to see the undutiful girl prepare with perse, e fect delight and alacrity to go away, without ven he feeling a pang at leaving a mother who had Char- nursed her through adverse illnesses, who had are to scolded her for seventeen years. a. IT.. 4777 The general accompanied the party to the dil eral igence-office. Little Char was very pale and mehe melancholy indeed when she took her place in Se night the coupé. "She should have a corner; she Saes stated. had been ill, and ought to have a corner," Uncle end a great Mac said, and cheerfully consented to be bodkin. Cyn the Our three special friends are seated. The othand so er passengers clamber into their places. Away el, to stay goes the clattering team as the general waves an adieu to his friends. "Monstrous fine horses those gray Normans; famous breed, indeed," he remarks to his wife on his return. e has been pher, and ...... you.' I can >e "artner water withered J L "Indeed," she echoes. "Pray, in what part of the carriage was Mr. Firmin ?" she presently asks. "In no part of the carriage at all!" Baynes answers, fiercely, turning beet-root red. And thus, though she had been silent, obedient, hanging her head, the woman showed that she was aware of her master's schemes, and why her girl il-grown had been taken away. She knew; but she was the) might beaten. It remained for her but to be silent and ary-woman bow her head. I dare say she did not sleep one w her trav- wink that night. She followed the diligence in its journey. "Char is gone," she thought. "Yes; in due time he will take from me the obedience of my other children, and tear them out of my lap." He-that is, the general-was Bere these sleeping meanwhile. He had had in the last wond ring few days four awful battles-with his child, with fed text in a his friends, with his wife-in which latter comI think, bat he had been conqueror. No wonder Baynes te than was tired and needed rest. Any one of tho-e &ardbox engagements was enough to weary the veteran. - hule If we take the liberty of looking into double x tied up ng on her sodge's A welkagh as In those old days there used to be two diligences which traveled nightly to Tours, setting out at the same hour, and stopping at almost the same relays. The diligence of Lafitte and Caillard supped at the Lion Noir at Orleans— the diligence of the Messageries Royales stopped at the Ecu de France, hard by. Well, as the Messageries Royales are supping at the Ecu de France, a passenger strolls over from that coach, and strolls and strolls until he comes to the coach of Lafitte, Caillard, and Company, and to the coupé window where Miss Baynes is trying to decipher her bonbon. bedded rooms, and peering into the thoughts steaming stable lanterns, when-oh, what made which are passing under private night-caps, may her start so? we not examine the coupé of a jingling diligence with an open window, in which a young lady sits wide awake by the side of her uncle and aunt? These perhaps are asleep; but she is not. Ah! she is thinking of another journey! that blissful one from Boulogne, when he was there yonder in the imperial, by the side of the conductor. When the MacWhirter party had come to the diligence-office, how her little heart had beat! How she had looked under the lamps at all the people lounging about the court! How she had listened when the clerk called out the names of the passengers; and, mercy, what a fright she had been in, lest he should be there He comes up-and as the night-lamps fall on after all, while she stood yet leaning on her fa- his face and beard-his rosy face, his yellow ther's arm! But there was no- Well, names, beard-oh! What means that scream of the I think, need scarcely be mentioned. There young lady in the coupé of Lafitte, Caillard, et was no sign of the individual in question. Papa Compagnie! I declare she has dropped the letkissed her, and sadly said good-by. Good Ma- ter which she was about to read. It has dropped dame Smolensk came with an adieu and an em- into a pool of mud under the diligence off forebrace for her dear Miss, and whispered, "Cour-wheel. And he with the yellow beard, and a age, mon enfant ;" and then said, "Hold, I have brought you some bonbons." There they were in a little packet. Little Charlotte put the packet into her little basket. Away goes the diligence, but the individual had made no sign. sweet happy laugh, and a tremble in his deep voice, says, “You need not read it. It was only to tell you what you know." Then the coupé window says, "Oh, Philip! Oh, my-" My what? You can not hear the words, beAway goes the diligence; and every now and cause the gray Norman horses come squeeling then Charlotte feels the little packet in her little and clattering up to their coach-pole with such basket. What does it contain-oh, what? If accompanying cries and imprecations from the Charlotte could but read with her heart, she horsekeepers and postillions that no wonder the would see into that little packet-the sweetest little warble is lost. It was not intended for bonbon of all perhaps it might be, or ah me! the you and me to hear; but perhaps you can guess bitterest almond! Through the night goes the the purport of the words. Perhaps in quite diligence, passing relay after relay. Uncle Mac old, old days, you may remember having heard sleeps. I think I have said he snored. Aunt such little whispers, in a time when the songMac is quite silent, and Char sits plaintively birds in your grove caroled that kind of song with her lonely thoughts and her bonbons, as very pleasantly and freely. But this, my good miles, hours, relays pass. madam, is a February number. The birds are "These ladies, will they descend and take a gone: the branches are bare: the gardener has cup of coffee, a cup of bouillon?" at last cries a actually swept the leaves off the walks: and the waiter at the coupé door, as the carriage stops whole affair is an affair of a past year, you unin Orleans. "By all means a cup of coffee," derstand. Well! carpe diem, fugit hora, etc. says aunt Mac. "The little Orleans wine etc. There, for one minute, for two minutes. is good," cries uncle Mac. "Descendons!", stands Philip over the diligence off fore-wheel, "This way, madame," says the waiter. "Char- talking to Charlotte at the window, and their lotte, my love, some coffee?" heads are quite close-quite close. What are "I will-I will stay in the carriage. I don't those two pairs of lips warbling, whispering? want any thing, thank you," says Miss Char-"Hi! Gare! Ohé!"” The horsekeepers, I say, lotte. And the instant her relations are gone, quite prevent you from hearing; and here come entering the gate of the Lion Noir, where, you the passengers out of the Lion Noir, aunt Mac know, are the Bureaux des Messageries, Lafitte, | still munching a great slice of bread-and-butter. Caillard, et Cie- I say, on the very instant when her relations have disappeared, what do you think Miss Charlotte does? She opens that packet of bonbons with fingers that tremble-tremble so, I wonder how she could undo the knot of the string (or do you think she had untied that knot under her shawl in the dark? I can't say. We never shall know). Well; she opens the packet. She does not care one fig for the lollipops, almonds, and so forth. She pounced on a little scrap of paper, and is going to read it by the lights of the Charlotte is quite comfortable, and does not want any thing, dear aunt, thank you. I hop she nestles in her corner and has a sweet slumber. On the journey the twin diligences pass and repass each other. Perhaps Charlotte look out of her window sometimes and toward th other carriage. I don't know. It is a long time ago. What used you to do in old days, ere railroads were, and when diligences ran? They were slow enough: but they have got to their journey's end somehow. They were tight, hot, dusty, dear, stuffy, and uncomfortable; but for all that, traveling was good sport sometimes. And if the world would have the kindness to go back for five-and-twenty or thirty years, some of us who have traveled on the Tours and Orleans Railway very comfortably would like to take the diligence journey now. Having myself seen the city of Tours only last year, of course I don't remember much about it. A man remembers boyhood, and the first sight of Calais, and so forth. But after much travel or converse with the world, to see a new town is to be introduced to Jones. He is like Brown; he is not unlike Smith. In a little while you hash him up with Thompson. I dare not be particular, then, regarding Mr. Firmin's life at Tours, lest I should make topographical errors, for which the critical schoolmaster would justly inflict chastisement. In the last novel I read about Tours there were blunders from the effect of which you know the wretched author never recovered. It was by one Scott, and had young Quentin Durward for a hero, and Isabel de Croye for a heroine; and she sate in her hostel, and sang, 66 Ah, County Guy, the hour is nigh." A pretty ballad enough; but what ignorance, my dear Sir! What descriptions of Tours, of Liége, are in that fallacious story! Yes, so fallacious and misleading, that I remember I was sorry, not because the description was unlike Tours, but because Tours was unlike the description. cards and going to the café; how the dinners those Popjoys gave were too absurdly ostentatious; and Popjoy, we know, in the Bench last year. How Mr. Flights, going on with that Major of French Carabineers, was really too, etc., etc. "How could I endure those people?" Philip would ask himself, when talking of that personage in after-days, as he loved and loves to do. "How could I endure them, I say! Mac was a good man; but I knew secretly in my heart, Sir, that he was a bore. Well: I loved him. I liked his old stories. I liked his bad old dinners: there is a very comfortable Touraine wine, by-the-way: a very warming little wine, Sir. Mrs. Mac you never saw, my good Mrs. Pendennis. Be sure of this, you never would have liked her. Well, I did. I liked her house, though it was damp, in a damp garden, frequented by dull people. I should like to go and see that old house now. I am per. fectly happy with my wife, but I sometimes go away from her to enjoy the luxury of living over our old days again. With nothing in the world but an allowance which was precarious, and had been spent in advance; with no particular plans for the future, and a few five-franc pieces for the present-by Jove, Sir! how did I dare to be so happy? What idiots we were, my love, to be happy at all! We were mad to marry. Don't tell me with a purse which didn't contain three months' consumption would we dare to marry now? We should be put into the mad ward of the work-house: that would be the only place for us. Talk about trusting in Heaven. Stuff and nonsense, ma'am! I have as good a right to go and buy a house in Belgrave Square, and trust to Heaven for the payment, as I had to marry when I did. We were paupers, Mrs. Char, and you know that very well!" "Oh yes. We were very wrong-very!" says Mrs. Charlotte, looking up to the chandelier of her ceiling (which, by-the-way, is of very handsome Venetian old glass). "We were very wrong, were not we, my dearest?" And herewith she will begin to kiss and fondle two or more babies that disport in her room-as if two or more babies had any thing to do with Philip's argument, that a man has no right to marry who has no pretty well-assured means of keeping a wife. So Quentin Firmin went and put up at the snug little hostel of the Faisan; and Isabel de Baynes took up her abode with her uncle, the Sire de MacWhirter; and I believe Master Firmin had no more money in his pocket than the Master Durward whose story the Scottish novelist told some forty years since. And I can not promise you that our young English adventurer shall marry a noble heiress of vast property, and engage the Boar of Ardennes in a hand-to-hand combat; that sort of Boar, madam, does not appear in our modern drawing-room histories. Of others, not wild, there be plenty. They gore you in clubs. They seize you by the doublet, and pin you against posts in public streets. They run at you in parks. I have seen them sit at bay after dinner, ripping, gashing, tossing a whole company. These our young adventurer had in good sooth to encounter, as is the case with most knights. Who escapes them? I remember an eminent person talking to me about Here, then, by the banks of the Loire, al bores for two hours once. O you stupid emi- though Philip had but a very few francs in his nent person! You never knew that you your-pocket, and was obliged to keep a sharp lookself had tusks, little eyes in your hure; a bristly mane to cut into tooth-brushes; and a curly tail! I have a notion that the multitude of bores is enormous in the world. If a man is a bore himself, when he is bored—and you can't deny this statement-then what am I, what are you, what your father, grandfather, son-all your amiable acquaintance, in a word? Of this I am sure. Major and Mrs. MacWhirter were not brilliant in conversation. What would you and I do, or say, if wo listen to the tittle-tattle of Tours? How the clergyman was certainly too fond of out on his expenses at the Hotel of the Golden Pheasant, he passed a fortnight of such happiness as I, for my part, wish to all young folks who read his veracious history. Though he was so poor, and ate and drank so modestly in the house, the maids, waiters, the landlady of the Pheasant, were as civil to him-yes, as civil as they were to the gouty old Marchioness of Carabas herself, who staid here on her way to the south, occupied the grand apartments, quarreled with her lodging, dinner, breakfast, breadand-butter in general, insulted the landlady in bad French, and only paid her bill under compulsion. Philip's was a little bill, but he paid it cheerfully. He gave only a small gratuity to the servants, but he was kind and hearty, and they knew he was poor. He was kind and hearty, I suppose, because he was so happy. I have known the gentleman to be by no means civil; and have heard him storm, and lector, and brow-beat landlords and waiters as fiercely as the Marquis of Carabas himself. But now Philip the Bear was the most gentle of bears, because his little Charlotte was leading him. Away with trouble and doubt, with squeamish pride and gloomy care! Philip had enough money for a fortnight, during which Tom Glazier, of the Monitor, promised to supply Philip's letters for the Pall Mall Gazette. All the designs of France, Spain, Russia, gave that idle "own correspondent" not the slightest anxiety. In the morning it was Miss Baynes; in the afternoon it was Miss Baynes. At six it was dinner and Charlotte; at nine it was Charlotte and tea. "Any how, love-making does not spoil his appetite," Major MacWhirter correctly remarked. Indeed, Philip had a glorious appetite; and health bloomed in Miss Charlotte's cheek, and beamed in her happy little heart. Dr. Firmin, in the height of his practice, never completed a cure more skillfully than that which was performed by Dr. Firmin, Junior. he returned to Paris and duty. Crack your whip, and scream your hi! and be off quick, postillion and diligence! I am glad we have taken Mr. Firmin out of that dangerous, lazy, love-making place. Nothing is to me so sweet as sentimental writing. I could have written hundreds of pages describing Philip and Charlotte, Charlotte and Philip. But a stern sense of duty intervenes. My modest muse puts a finger on her lip, and says, "Hush about that business!" Ah, my worthy friends, you little know what soft-hearted people those cynics are! If you could have come on Diogenes by surprise, I dare say you might have found him reading sentimental novels and whimpering in his tub. Philip shall leave his sweet-heart and go back to his business, and we will not have one word about tears, promises, raptures, parting. Never mind about these sentimentalities, but please, rather, to depict to yourself our young fellow so poor that, when the coach stops for dinner at Orleans, he can only afford to purchase a penny loaf and a sausage for his own hungry cheek. When he reached the Hôtel Poussin, with his meagre carpet-bag, they served him a supper which he ate to the admiration of all beholders in the little coffee-room. He was in great spirits and gayety. He did not care to make any secret of his poverty, and how he had been unable to afford to pay for dinner. Most of the guests at Hôtel Poussin knew what it was to be poor. Often and often they had dined on credit when they put back their napkins into their respective pigeon-holes. But my landlord knew his guests. They were poor men-honest men. They paid him in the end, and each "I ran the thing so close, Sir," I remember Philip bawling out, in his usual energetic way, while describing this period of his life's greatest happiness to his biographer, "that I came back to Paris outside the diligence, and had not money enough to dine on the road. But I bought a sausage, Sir, and a bit of bread—and | could help his neighbor in a strait. a brutal sausage it was, Sir-and I reached my After Mr. Firmin's return to Paris he did not lodgings with exactly two sous in my pocket." care for a while to go to the Elysian Fields. Roger Bontemps himself was not more content They were not Elysian for him, except in Miss than our easy philosopher. Charlotte's company. He resumed his newsSo Philip and Charlotte ratified and sealed a paper correspondence, which occupied but a day treaty of Tours, which they determined should in each week, and he had the other six-nay, he never be broken by either party. Marry with- scribbled on the seventh day likewise, and covout papa's consent? Oh, never! Marry any ered immense sheets of letter-paper with rebody but Philip? Oh, never-never! Not if marks upon all manner of subjects, addressed to she lived to be a hundred, when Philip would in a certain Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle Baynes, consequence be in his hundred and ninth or chez M. le Major Mac, etc. On these sheets of tenth year, would this young Joan have any paper Mr. Firmin could talk so long, so loudly, but her present Darby. Aunt Mac, though so fervently, so eloquently to Miss Baynes, that she may not have been the most accomplished she was never tired of hearing, or he of holding or highly-bred of ladies, was a warm-hearted and affectionate aunt Mac. She caught in a mild form the fever from these young people. She had not much to leave, and Mac's relations would want all he could spare when he was gone. But Charlotte should have her garnets, and her tea-pot, and her India shawl-that she should.* And with many blessings this enthusiastic old lady took leave of her future nephew-in-law when forth. He began imparting his dreams and his Do "Bon Dieu! had any will receive such dear, delightful, nonsensical | but note her demeanor. "Ce pauvre général is ill, very ill, Philip," Smolensk said, in her grave voice. He was so gravely ill, Madame said, that his daughter had been sent for. "Had she come?" asked Philip, with a start. "You think but of her-you care not for the poor old man. You are all the same, you men. All egotists-all. Go! I know you! I never knew one that was not," said Madame. Philip has his little faults: perhaps egotism is one of his defects. Perhaps it is yours, or even mine. "You have been here a week since Thursday last, and you have never written or sent to a woman who loves you well. Go! It was not ing to her. He could do few things in modera- As soon as he saw her Philip felt that he had tion, this man-and of this delightful privilege of writing to Charlotte he now enjoyed his heart's fill. After a fortnight or three weeks of this rapture, when winter was come on Paris, and icicles hung on the bough, how did it happen that one day, two days, three days passed, and the postman brought no little letter in the well-known little handwriting for Monsieur, Monsieur Philip Firmin, à Paris? Three days, four days, and no letter. Oh, torture, could she be ill? Could her aunt and uncle have turned against her, and forbidden her to write, as her father and mother had done before? Oh, grief, and sorrow, and rage! As for jealousy, our leonine friend never knew such a passion. It never entered into his lordly heart to doubt of his little maiden's love. But still four, five days have passed, and not one word has come from Tours. The little Hôtel Poussin was in a commotion. I have said that when our friend felt any passion very strongly he was sure to speak of it. Did Don Quixote lose any opportunity of declaring to the world that Dulcinea del Tobosa was peerless among women? Did not Antar bawl out in battle, "I am the lover of Ibla?" Our knight had taken all the people of the hotel into his confidence somehow. They all knew of his condition-all, the painter, the poet, the half-pay Polish officer, the landlord, the hostess, down to the little knifeboy who used to come in with, "The factor comes off to pass-no letter this morning." been neglectful and ungrateful. We have owned so much already. But how should Madame know that he had returned on Thursday week? When they looked up after her reproof, his eager eyes seemed to ask this question. "Could she not write to me and tell me that you were come back? Perhaps she knew that you would not do so yourself. A woman's heart teaches her these experiences early," continued the lady, sadly; then she added: "I tell you, you are good-for-nothings, all of you! And I repent me, see you, of having had the bêtise to pity you!" "I shall have my quarter's pay on Saturday. I was coming to you then," said Philip. "Was it that I was speaking of? What! you are all cowards, men all! Oh, that I have been beast, beast, to think at last I had found a man of heart!" How much or how often this poor Ariadne had trusted and been forsaken I have no means of knowing, or desire of inquiring. Perhaps it is as well for the polite reader, who is taken into my entire confidence, that we should not know Madame de Smolensk's history from the first page to the last. Granted that Ariadne was deceived by Theseus: but then she consoled herself, as we may all read in Smith's Dictionary; and then she must have deceived her father in order to run away with Theseus. I suspectI suspect, I say that these women who are so very much betrayed are- But we are speculating on this French lady's antecedents, when Charlotte, her lover, and her family are the persons with whom we have mainly to do. These two, I suppose, forgot self, about which each for a moment had been busy, and Madame No doubt Philip's political letters became, under this outward pressure, very desponding and gloomy. One day, as he sat gnawing his mustaches at his desk, the little Anatole enters his apartment and cries, "Tenez, M. Philippe. That lady again!" And the faithful, the watch-resumed: "Yes, you have reason; Miss is here. ful, the active Madame Smolensk once more made her appearance in his chamber. Philip blushed and hung his head for shame. Ungrateful brute that I am, he thought; I have been back more than a week, and never thought a bit about that good, kind soul who came to my succor. I am an awful egotist. Love is always so. As he rose up to greet his friend, she looked so grave, and pale, and sad, that he could not It was time. Hold! Here is a note from her." And Philip's kind messenger once more put a paper into his hands: "My dearest father is very, very ill. Oh, Philip! I am so unhappy; and he is so good, and gentle, and kind, and loves me so!" "Before "It is true," Madame resumed. Charlotte came he thought only of her. When his wife comes up to him he pushes her away. I have not loved her much, that lady, that is |