 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, visit our website at LibriVox.org. Recorded by Max Portosasada, the young man. The History of Henry Esmond Esquire by William Makepeace Thackeray. Book 2, Chapter 2. I come to the end of my captivity, but not of my trouble. Among the company which came to visit the two officers was an old acquaintance of Harry Esmond. That gentleman of the guards, namely, who had been so kind to Harry when Captain Westbury's troop had been quartered at Castlewood more than seven years before. Dick the Scholar was no longer Dick the Trooper now, but Captain Steele of Lucasus Fusiliers, and Secretary to my Lord Cuts, that famous officer of King Williams, the bravest and most beloved man of the English army. The two jolly prisoners had been drinking with a party of friends, for our cellar and that of the keepers of Newgate, too, were supplied with endless hampers of burgundy and champagne that the friends of the colonels sent in, and Harry, having no wish for their drink or their conversation, being too feeble in health for the one in two saddened spirits for the other, was sitting apart in his little room, reading such books as he had one evening, when honest Colonel Westbury, flush with liquor, and always good-humored in and out of his cups, came laughing into Harry's closet and said, Ho young Kiljoy, as a friend come to see thee, he'll pray with thee, or he'll drink with thee, or he'll drink and pray turn about. Dick my Christian hero, here's the little scholar of Castlewood. Dick came up and kissed Esmond on both cheeks, imparting a strong perfume of burnt sack, along with his caress to the young man. What, is this a little man who used to talk Latin and fetch our bowls? How tall thou art grown! I protest I should have known thee anywhere, and so you have turned ruffian and fighter, and wanted to measure swords with Mohan, did you? I protest that Mohan said at the guard dinner yesterday, where there was a pretty company of us, that the young fellow wanted to fight him, and was the better man of the two. I wish we could have tried and proved it, Mr. Steele, says Esmond, thinking of his dead benefactor and his eyes filling with tears. With the exception of that one cruel letter he had had from his mistress, Mr. Esmond heard nothing from her, and she seemed determined to execute a resolve of parting from him and disowning him. But he had news of her, such as it was, which Mr. Steele assiduously brought him from the princes and princesses court, where our honest captain had been advanced to the post of gentleman waiter. Went off duty there, Captain Dick often came to console his friends in captivity, a good nature and a friendly disposition towards all who were in ill fortune, no doubt prompting him to make his visits, and good fellowship and good wine to prolong them. Faith, says Westbury, the little scholar was the first to begin the quarrel, I mind me of it now, at Lockett's. I always hated that fellow Mohan. Where was the real cause of the quarrel betwixt him in poor Frank? I would wager towards a woman. Towards a quarrel about play. For my word about play, Harry said, my poor Lord lost great sums to his guest at Castlewood, angry words passed between them, and though Lord Castlewood was the kindest and most pliable soul alive, his spirit was very high, and hence that meeting which has brought us all here, says Mr. Esmond, resolved never to acknowledge that there had ever been any other cause but cards for the duel. I do not like to use bad words of a nobleman, says Westbury, but if my Lord Mohan were a commoner, I would say, which was a pity he was not hanged. He was familiar with dice and women at a time other boys are at school being birched. He was as wicked as the oldest rake, years' area done growing, and handled a sword and a foil and a bloody one too, for he ever used a razor. He, hell, poor will mount forward and talk that night, when bloody Dick Hill ran him through. He will come to a bad end, will that young Lord, and no end is bad enough for him, says honest Mr. Westbury, whose prophecy was fulfilled 12 years after upon that fatal day when Mohan fell, dragging down one of the bravest and greatest gentlemen in England in his fall. From Mr. Steele then, who brought the public rumour, as well as his own private intelligence, Esmond learned the movements of his unfortunate mistress. Steele's heart was a very inflammable composition, and the gentleman Usher spoke in terms of boundless admiration both of the widow, the most beautiful woman, as he said, and of her daughter, who in the captain's eyes was a still greater paragon. If the pale widow whom Captain Richard in his poetic rapture compared to a Naiobian tears, to a Sagesmanda, to a weeping Belvedere, was an object the most lovely and pathetic which his eyes had ever been held, or for which his heart had ever melted. Even her ripened perfections and beauty were as nothing, compared to the promise of that extreme loveliness which the good captain saw in her daughter. It was the matra puca filia puquerior. Steele composed sonnets, whilst he was on duty in his prince's antechamber, to the maternal and filial charms. He would speak for hours about them to Henry Esmond, and indeed he could have chosen few subjects more likely to interest the unhappy young man whose heart was now as always devoted to these ladies, and who was thankful to all who loved them or praised them or wished them well. Not that his fidelity was recompensed by any answering kindness, or sure or relenting even, on the part of a mistress, object now after ten years of love and benefactions. The poor young man getting no answer, saved tushers to that letter which he had written, and being too proud to write more, opened a part of his heart to Steele, to whom no man, when unhappy, could find a kinder hearer or more friendly emissary, described in words which were no doubt pathetic, for they came emo pectorae and caused honest dick to weep plentifully. His youth, his contancy, his fond devotion to that household which had reared him, his affection, how earned, and how tenderly requited until but yesterday, and as far as he might, the circumstances and causes for which that sad quarrel had made of Esmond a prisoner under sentence. A widow and orphans of those, whom in life he held dearest. In terms that might well move a harder-hearted man than young Esmond's compudant, for indeed the speaker's own heart was half-broke as he uttered them. He described a part of what had taken place in that only sad interview which his mistress had granted him. How she had left him with anger and almost implication, whose words and thoughts had until then been only blessing in kindness. How she had accused him of the guilt of that blood in exchange for which he had cheerfully has sacrificed his own. Indeed, enists the Lord Mohan, the Ward Warwick, and all the gentlemen engaged, as well as the common rumor out of doors still told him, bore out the luckless young man, and with all his heart and tears he besought Mr. Steele to inform his mistress of her kinsman's unhappiness, and to deprecate that cruel anger she showed him. Half-fronted with grief at the injustice done him in contrasting it with a thousand soft recollections of love and confidence gone by that made his present misery inexpressibly more bitter. The poor wretch passed many a lonely day and wakeful night in a kind of powerless despair and rage against his iniquitous fortune. It was the softest hand that struck him, the gentlest and most compassionate nature that persecuted him. I would, as leave, he said, have pleaded guilty to the murder, and have suffered for it like any other felon, as have to endure the torture to which my mistress subjects me. Although the recital of Esmond's story and his passionate appeals and remonstrances do so many tears from Dick who heard them, they had no effect upon the person whom they were designed to move. Esmond's ambassador came back from the mission with which the poor young gentleman had charged him with a sad blank face and a shake of the head, which told that there was no hope for the prisoner, and scarce a wretched culprit in that prison of Newgate ordered to execution and trembling for a reprieve felt more cast down than Mr. Esmond innocent and condemned, as had been arranged between the prisoner and his counsel in their consultations. Mr. Steele had gone to the Dowager's house in Chelsea, where it has been said the widow and her orphans were had seen my Lady Viscountess and pleaded the cause of her unfortunate kinsman. And I think I spoke well, my poor boy, says Mr. Steele, for who would not speak well in such a cause and before so beautiful a judge? I did not see the lovely Beatrix, sure her famous namesake of Florence was never half so beautiful. Only the young Viscount, in the room with the Lord Churchill, my Lord of Marlborough's eldest son, but these young gentlemen went off to the garden. I could see them from the window, tilting at each other with poles, in a mimic tournament, grief touches the young but lightly. And I remember that I beat a drum at the coffin of my own father. My Lady Viscountess looked out at the two boys at their game and said, You see, sir, children are taught to use weapons of death as toys and to make a sport of murder. And as she spoke, she looked so lovely and stood there in herself so sad and beautiful, an instance of that doctrine whereof I am a humble preacher that had I not dedicated my little volume of the Christian hero, I perceive, Harry, that I hast not cut the leaves of it. Sir, I mean it's good, believe me, that the preacher's life may not answer it. I say, cut the leaves of it. I say, hadn't I dedicated the volume to Lord Cutts? I would have asked permission to place her Ladyship's name on the first page. I think I never saw such a beautiful violet as that of her eyes, Harry. Her complexion is of the pink of the blush rose. She has an exquisite turned wrist and dimpled head and I make no doubt. Did you come to tell me about the dimples on my lady's hand? Broke out Mr. Esmond sadly. A lovely creature in affliction always seems doubly beautiful to me, says the poor captain, who indeed was but too often in a state to see double. And so checked, he resumed the interrupted thread of his story. As I spoke my business, Mr. Steele said, and narrated to your mistress what all the world knows, and the other side had been eager to acknowledge, that you had tried to put yourself between the two lords, and to take your patron's quarrel to your own point. I recounted the general praises of your gallantry, besides my Lord Mohan's particular testimony to it. I thought the widow enlisted with some interest in her eyes. I have never seen such a violet, Harry. Looked up at mine, once or twice. But after I had spoken on this theme for a while, she suddenly broke away with a cry of grief. I would to God, sir, she said. I had never heard that word gallantry which you use, or known the meaning of it. My Lord might have been here but for that. My home might be happy. My poor boy have a father. It was what you gentlemen call gallantry, came into my home, and drove my husband on to the cruel sword that killed him. You should not speak the word to a Christian woman, sir. A poor widowed mother of orphans, whose home was happy until the world came into it. The wicked godless world that takes the blood of the innocent and lets the guilty go free. As the afflicted lady spoke in this strain, sir, Mr. Steele continued, it seemed as an indignation moved her even more than grief. Compensation she went on passionately. Her cheeks and eyes kindling. What compensation does your world give the widow for her husband and the children for the murderer of her father? The wretch who did the deed has not even a punishment. Conscience. What conscience has he who can enter the house of a friend, whisper falsehood and insult to a woman that never harmed him and stabbed the kind heart that trusted him? My Lord, my Lord wretches, my Lord villains, my Lord murderers, peers meet to try him, and they dismiss him at the ward or two of reproof and send him into the world again to pursue women with lust and falsehood and to murder unsuspecting guests that harbour him. That day, my Lord, my Lord murderer, I will never name him, was let loose. A woman was executed at Tyburn for stealing at a shop, but a man may rob another of his life or a lady of her honour and shall pay no penalty. I take my child, run to the throne, and on my knees ask for justice, and the king refuses me, the king! He is no king of mine, he shall never be. He too robbed the throne from the king, his father, the true king, and he has gone unpunished as the great do. I then thought to speak for you, Mr. Still continued, and I interposed by saying there was one man who, at least, would have put his own breast between your husbands and my Lord Mohan's sword. Your poor young kinsman, Harry Esmond, have told me that he tried to draw the quarrel on himself. Are you come from him? Asked the lady, so Mr. Still went on, rising up with a great severity and statelyness. I thought you had come from the princess. I saw Mr. Esmond in his prison, and bade him farewell. He brought misery into my house. He never should have entered it. Madam, he's not to blame I interposed, continued Mr. Still. Do I blame him to you, sir? asked the widow. If his he who sent you, say that I have taken counsel, where, she spoke with a very pallid cheek now, and a break in her voice, were all who asked me have it, and that it bids me depart from him, and to see him no more. We met in prison for the last time, at least for years to come. It may be in years hence when, when our knees and our tears and our contrition have changed our sinful heart, sir, and wrought our pardon, we may meet again, but not now. After what is passed, I could not bear to see him. I wish him well, sir, but I wish him farewell, too. And if he has that, that regard towards us, which he speaks of, I beseech him to prove it, by obeying me and this. I shall break the young man's heart, madam, by this hard sentence, Mr. Still said. The lady shook her head, continued my kind scholar. The hearts of a young man, Mr. Still, are not so mage, she said. Mr. Esmond will find other other friends. The mistress of this house has relented very much toward the late Lord's son, she added with a blush, and has promised me that she will care for his fortune. Whilst I live in it, after the horrid horrid deed which has passed, Castlewood must never be able home to him, never. Nor would I have him write to me, except, no, I would have never write to me, nor see him more. Give him, if you will, my parting, hush, not a word of this before my daughter. Here the fair Beatrix entered from the river, with her cheeks flushing with health, and looking only the more lovely and fresh from the morning habiliments which she wore. And my lady Viscountess said, Beatrix, this is Mr. Still, gentleman ushered to the Prince's Highness. When does your new comedy appear, Mr. Still? I hope that we'll be out of prison for the first night, Harry. The sentimental captain concluded his sad tale, saying, The beauty of Philiapucria drove Pulchrum Matrim out of my head. And yet, as I came down the river, I thought about the pair, the pallid dignity and exquisite grace of the matron had the uppermost, and I thought her even more noble than the Virgin. The party of prisoners lived very well in Newgate, and with comforts very different to those which were awarded to the poor wretches there, his insensibility to their misery, their gait, he's still more frightful, their curses and blasphemy have struck with a kind of shame since, as proving how selfish during his imprisonment his own particular grief was, and how entirely the thoughts of it absorbed him. If the three gentlemen lived well under the care of the warden in Newgate, it was because they paid well, and indeed the cost of the dearest ordinary, or the grandest tavern in London could not have furnished a longer reckoning than our host of the Hamcuff Inn, as Colonel Westbury called it. Our rooms were the three in the gate over Newgate, on the second store looking up Newgate Street, toward Cheepside in Paul's church, and we had leave to walk in the roof, and could see then Smithfield and Bluecoat Boys' school gardens in the Chartres, where, as Harry Esmond remembered, Dick the Scholar, and his friend Tom Tusher had had their schooling. Harry could never have paid his share of that prodigious heavy reckoning which my landlord brought to his guests once a week, for he had but three pieces in his pockets that fatal night before the duel when the gentlemen were at cards and offered to play five, but while he was yet ill at the gatehouse, after Lady Castlewood had visited him there, and before his trial there came one in an orange tonic coat in Blue Lace, the livery which the Esmond's always wore, and brought a sealed packet for Mr. Esmond, which contained twenty guineas, and a note saying that a council had been appointed for him, and that more money would be forthcoming whenever he needed it. It was a queer letter from the Scholar, as she was, or as she called herself, the Dowager Viscountess Castlewood written in the strange, barbarous French, which she and many other fine ladies of that time, witness her grace of Portsmouth, employed. Indeed, spelling was not an article of general commodity in the world then, and as my Lord Marlboro's letters can show that he, for one, had but a little share of this part of grammar. Monde Coussin, my lady, this Countess Dowager wrote, Conte de Verric, ne se plaît qu'à parler de vous. Monsieur de Monde, aussi. Il vit que vous avez, vous levez, vous bastre avec lui, l'oeil. Que vous estes, que vous estes plus forts que lui, feu les excrimes, que lui a surtout certaines bottes, que vous scavez, qu'il n'a jamais ce que parriait, et que sans oeufs, eux aient fait de lui, si vous le suivez, vous vous y aient battu ensemble. Ainsi, ce pauvre, ce pauvre Viscounte est mort, mort est ponté. Monde Coussin, mon Coussin, j'ai dans la tête que vous nette qu'une petite monstre. Ainsi, que les aisements ont toujours reste, l'oeil est chez moi. Moi, j'ai recueilli ces pauvres femmes. Elle est furieuse qu'on veut. Allons tous les jours chercher le roi, d'ici, demandant a grand scru revanche pour son mari. Elle ne veut voyeur, ni entendre parler de vous, pourtant elle ne fait qu'en parler mille fois par jour. Quand vous serrez au prison, venez me voyeur. J'aurai soin de vous. Si cette petite prude veut se défaire de son petit monstre, elle est je quand qu'il n'est son trop tard. Je m'en chargerai. J'ai encore quelque entrée et quelques escouts de costée. Ne veut ça recommande avec Milady, Marlboro, qui est tout puicante avec la reine Anne. C'est d'un sens intéressant pour la petite prude, qui pour pourtant a enfi de mes mains, aggese que vous savez. En sortant de prison, venez ici. Je ne puis vous recevoir chez moi à cause des méchants. D'où m'ont mépris, d'où moi vous aurez logement. Isabelle vous conteste Desmond. Marcianesa Vesmond, this lady sometimes called herself in virtue of that patent which had been given by the late King James to Harry Esmond's father, and in this state she had her train carried by a night's wife, a cup and cover of a say to drink from an infringed cloth. He who was of the same age as little Francis, whom shall henceforth call this Count Castle would hear, was H.R.H., the Prince of Wales, born the same year and month with Frank, and just proclaimed at St. Germain, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. End of book two, chapter two. Book two, chapter three, of the history of Henry Esmond, Esquire, by William Makepeace Thackeray. This is a Librebox recording. All Librebox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librebox.org. Recording by Ralph Snelson. The History of Henry Esmond, Esquire, by William Makepeace Thackeray. Book two, chapter three. I Take the Queen's Pay in Quinn's Regiment. The fellow in the Orange Tawny livery with blue lace and facings was in waiting when Esmond came out of prison and taking the young gentleman's slender baggage led the way out of that odious new gate, and by fleet conduit down to the Thames, where a pair of oars was called, and they went up the river to Chelsea. Esmond thought the sun had never shown so bright, nor the air felt so fresh and exhilarating. Temple Garden, as they rode by, looked like the Garden of Eden to him, and the aspect of the quays, wharves, and buildings by the river, Somerset House, and Westminster, where the splendid new bridge was just beginning. Lambeth Tower and Palace, and that busy shining scene of the Thames swarming with boats and barges, filled his heart with pleasure and cheerfulness, as well such a beautiful scene might to one who had been a prisoner so long, and with so many dark thoughts deepening the gloom of his captivity. They rode up at length to the pretty village of Chelsea, where the nobility had many handsome country houses, and so came to my Lady Viscountess's house, a cheerful new house in the row facing the river, with a handsome garden behind it, and a pleasant lookout both towards Surrey and Kensington, where stands the noble ancient palace of the Lord Warwick, Harry's reconciled adversary. Here in her Ladyship's saloon the young man saw again some of those pictures which had been at Castlewood, and which she had removed fence on the death of her Lord, Harry's father, especially and in the place of honour was Sir Peter Lely's picture of the honourable mistress Isabella Esmond as Diana in yellow satin with a bow in her hand and a crescent in her forehead, and dogs frisking about her. It was painted about the time when royal Edomians were said to find favour with this virgin huntress, and as goddesses have youth perpetual this one believed to the day of her death that she never grew older, and always persisted in supposing the picture was still like her. After he had been shown to her room by the groom of the chamber, who felled many offices besides in her Ladyship's modest household, and after a proper interval his elderly goddess Diana about safe to appear to the young man. A blackamore in a turkish habit with red boots and a silver collar on which Biscountess's arms were engraven, preceded her and bore her cushion, and then came her gentlewoman, a little pack of spaniels barking and frisking about preceded the austere huntress, then behold the Biscountess herself dropping odours. Esmond recollected from his childhood that rich aroma of musk which his mother-in-law, for she may be called so, exhaled. As the sky grows redder and redder toward sunset, so in the decline of her years the cheeks of my Lady Dowager blushed more deeply. Her face was eliminated with vermilion, which appeared the brighter from the white paint employed to set it off. She wore the ringlets which had been in fashion in King Charles time, whereas the ladies of King Williams had headdresses like the towers of Cybel. Her eyes gleamed out from the mist of this queer structure of paint, dyes, and pomottoms. Such was my Lady Biscountess, Mr. Edmund's father's widow. He made her such a profound bow, as her dignity and relationship merited, and advanced with the greatest gravity, and once more kissed that hand upon the trembling knuckles of which glittered a score of rings, remembering old times when that trembling hand made him tremble. Marchionis, says he, bowing and on one knee, is it only the hand I may have the honour of saluting, for accompanying that inward laughter which the sight of such an astonishing old figure might well produce in the young man there was goodwill too, and the kindness of consanguinity. She had been his father's wife, and was his grandfather's daughter. She had suffered him in old days and was kind to him now after her fashion, and now that bar sinister was removed from Esmond's thought, and that secret aproprium no longer cast upon his mind, he was pleased to feel family ties and own them, perhaps secretly vain of the sacrifice he had made, and to think that he, Esmond, was really the chief of his house, and only prevented by his own agnanomity from advancing his claim. At least ever since he had learned that secret from his poor patron on his dying bed, actually as he was standing beside it, he had felt an independency which he had never known before, and which since did not desert him. So he called his old aunt Marchionis, but with an air as if he was the marquee of Esmond who so addressed her. Did she read in the young gentleman's eyes which had now no fear of hers or their superannuated authority that he knew or suspected the truth about his birth? She gave a start of surprise at his altered manner. Indeed it was quite a different bearing to that of the Cambridge student who had paid her a visit two years since, and whom she had dismissed with five pieces sent by the groom of the chamber. She eyed him, then trembled a little more than was her won't, perhaps, and said, Welcome, cousin, in a frightened voice, his resolution, as has been said before, had been quite different, namely so to bear himself through life as if the secret of his birth was not known to him, but he suddenly, and rightly, determined on a different course. He asked that her ladyship's attendance should be dismissed, and when they were private, Welcome, nephew, at least Madam, it should be, he said, A great wrong has been done to me and to you and to my poor mother who is no more. I declare before heaven that I was guiltless of it, she cried out, giving up her cause at once. It was your wicked father who brought this dishonor on our family, says Esmond. I know it full well. I want to disturb no one. Those who are in present possession have been my dearest benefactors, and are quite innocent of intentional wrong to me. The late Lord, my dear patron, knew not the truth until a few months before his death, when Father Holt brought the news to him. The wretch! He had it in confession. He had it in confession, cried out the Dowager Lady. Not so. He learned it elsewhere, as well as in confession, Mr. Esmond answered. My father, when wounded at the Boyne, told the truth to a French priest, who was in hiding after the battle, as well as to the priest there at whose house he died. This gentleman did not think fit to divulge the story till he met with Mr. Holt at St. Omers, and the latter kept it back for his own purpose. And until he had learned whether my mother was alive or no. She is dead years since. My poor patron told me with his dying breath, and I doubt him not. I do not know even whether I could prove a marriage. I would not if I could. I do not care to bring shame on our name, or grief upon those whom I love, however hardly they may use me. My father's son, madam, won't aggravate the wrong my father did you. Continue to be his widow, and give me your kindness. Tis all I ask from you, and I shall never speak of this matter again. My view, etay un nobel, you no mat, breaks out my lady speaking, as usual, with her, when she was agitated, in the French language. Nobilech s'obelige, says Mr. Esmond, making her a lobao. There are those alive to whom, in return for their love to me, I often fondly said I would give my life away. Shall I be their enemy now, and quarrel about a title? What matters who has it? Tis with the family still. What can there be in that little prude of a woman that makes men so refoller about her, cries out my Lady Dowager. She was here for a month petitioning the king. She is pretty, and well conserved, but she has not the bell air. In his late Majesty's court all the men pretended to admire her, and she was no better than a little wax doll. She is better now, and looks the sister of her daughter. But what mean you all by be praising her? Mr. Steele, who was in waiting on Prince George, seeing her with her two children going to Kensington, writ a poem about her, and says he shall wear her colours, and dress in black for the future. Mr. Congreve says he will write a morning widow, that shall be better than his morning bride. Though their husbands quarreled and fought when that wretched Churchill deserted the king, for which he deserved to be hung, Lady Marlborough has again gone wild about the little widow, insulted me in my own drawing-room by saying to his not the old widow, but the young Biscountess she had come to see. Little Castlewood and Little Lord Churchill are to be sworn friends, and have boxed each other twice or thrice like brothers already, it was that wicked young moan who, coming back from the provinces last year where he had disinterred her, raved about her all the winter, said she was a pearl set before swine, and killed poor stupid Frank. The quarrel was all about his wife, I know it was all about her. Was there anything between her and mohan, nephew? Tell me now, was there anything? About yourself, I do not ask you to answer questions. Mr. Esmond blushed up. My lady's virtue is like that of a saint in heaven, madame, he cried out. Eh? Monde vieux! Many saints get to heaven after having a deal to repent of. I believe you are like all the rest of the fools and madly in love with her. Indeed, I loved and honoured her before all the world, Esmond answered. I take no shame in that, and she has shut her door on you, given the living to that horrid young cub, son of that horrid old bear, toucher, and so she will never see you more. Monsieur Monde no vieux! We are all like that. When I was a young woman, I'm positive that a thousand duels were fought about me, and when poor monsieur de Sousy drowned himself in the canal at Bruce, because I danced with Count Springbok, I couldn't squeeze out a single tear, but danced till five o'clock the next morning. It was the Count. No, it was my Lord Ormond that played the fiddles, and his Majesty did me the honour of dancing all night with me. How you are grown! You have got the bell-air. You are a black man. Our Esmonds are all black. The little prude son is fair. So with his father, fair and stupid, you were an ugly little wretch when you came to Castlewood. You are all eyes, like a young crow. We intended you should be a priest, that awful father Holt, how he used to frighten me when I was ill. I have a comfortable director now, the Abadouillet, a dear man. We make meager on Fridays always. My cook is a debout, pious man. You, of course, are of the right way of thinking. They say the Prince of Orange is very ill indeed. In this way the old dowager rattled on remorselessly to Mr. Esmond, who was quite astounded with her present volubility, contrasting it with her former haughty behavior to him, but she had taken him into favor for the moment and chose not only to like him, as far as her nature permitted, but to be afraid of him. And he found himself to be as familiar with her now as a young man, as when a boy he had been timorous and silent. She was as good as her word respecting him. She introduced him to her company, of which she entertained a good deal, of the adherents of King James, of course, and a great deal of loud intriguing took place over her card-tables. She presented Mr. Esmond as her kinsman to many persons of honor. She supplied him not ill liberally with money, which he had no scruple in accepting from her, considering the relationship which he bore to her, and the sacrifices which he himself was making in behalf of the family. But he had made up his mind to continue at no woman's apron strings longer, and perhaps had cast about how he should distinguish himself, and make himself a name which his singular fortune had denied him, a discontent with his former bookish life and quietude, a better feeling of revolt at that slavery in which he had chosen to confine himself for the sake of those whose hardness towards him made his heart bleed, a restless wish to see men in the world, let him to think of the military profession, at any rate to desire to see a few campaigns, and accordingly he pressed his new patroness to get him a pair of colors, and one day had the honour of finding himself appointed an ensign in Colonel Quinn's regiment of fusilliers on the Irish establishment. Mr. Esmond's commission was scarce three weeks old when that accident befell King William which ended the life of the greatest, the wisest, the bravest, and the most clement sovereign whom England ever knew. It was the fashion of the hostile party to assail this great prince's reputation during his life, but the joy which they and all his enemies in Europe showed at his death is a proof of the terror in which they held him. Young as Esmond was, he was wise enough, and generous enough too, let it be said, to scorn that indecency of graduation which broke out amongst the followers of King James in London upon the death of this illustrious prince, this invincible warrior, this wise and moderate statesman. Loyalty to the exiled king's family was traditional, as has been said, in that house to which Mr. Esmond belonged. His father's widow had all her hopes, sympathies, recollections, prejudices, engaged on King James' side, and was certainly as noisy a conspirator as ever asserted the king's rights or abused his opponents over a quadrille table or a dish of bohea. Her leadership's house swarmed with ecclesiastics, in disguise and out, with tail-bearers from St. Germain's and quidnunks that knew the last news from First Eye, nay, the exact force and number of the next expedition which the French king was to send from Dunkirk, and which was to swallow up the Prince of Orange, his army and his court. She had received the Duke of Burwick when he had landed here in ninety-six. She kept the glass he drank from, bowing, she never would use it till she drank King James, the Third's health in it, on his Majesty's return. She had tokens from the Queen and relics of the Saint who, if the story was true, had not always been a Saint as far as she and many others were concerned. She believed in the miracles wrought at his tomb and had a hundred authentic stories of wondrous cures effected by the Blessed King's Rosaries, the medals which he wore, the locks of his hair, or what not. Esmond remembered a score of marvellous tales which the credulous old woman told him. There was the Bishop of Attune that was healed of a malady he had for forty years and which left him after he said mass for the repose of the King's soul. There was M. Marai, a surgeon in Avernia, who had a palsy in both his legs, which was cured through the King's intercession. There was Philip Petay of the Benedictines who had a suffocating cough which well I kill him, but he besought relief of heaven through the merits and intercession of the Blessed King, and he straightway felt a profuse sweat raking out all over him and was recovered perfectly. And there was the wife of M. Lepevier, dancing master to the Duke of Saxagatha, who was entirely eased of arumatism by the King's intercession of which miracle there could be no doubt. For her surgeon and his apprentice had given their testimony under oath that they did not in any way contribute to the cure. Of these tales, and a thousand like them, Mr. Esmond believed as much as he chose. His kin's woman's greater faith had swallowed for them all. The English High Church Party did not adopt these legends. But truth and honour, as they thought, bound them to the exiled King's side. Nor had the Bani's family any warmer supporter than that kind lady of Castlewood in whose house Esmond was brought up. She influenced her husband very much more perhaps than my lord knew, who admired his wife prodigiously, though he might be inconstant to her, and who, adverse to the trouble of thinking himself, gladly enough adopted the opinions which she chose for him. To one of her simple and faithful heart, allegiance to any sovereign, but the one was impossible. To serve King William for interest's sake would have been a monstrous hypocrisy and treason. Her pure conscience could no more have consented to it than to a theft, a forgery, or any other base action. Lord Castlewood might have been one over, no doubt, but his wife never could. And he submitted his conscience to hers in this case, as he did in most others, when he was not tempted too sorely. And it was from his affection and gratitude, most likely, and from that eager devotion for his mistress, which characterized all Edmund's youth, that the young man subscribed to this, and other articles of faith, which his fond benefactress set him. Had she been a wig, he had been one. Had she followed Mr. Fox and turned Quaker, no doubt he would have abjured Ruffles and a periwig, and have force-worn swords, lace coats, and cloaked stockings. In the scholar's voyage disputes at the university, where parties ran very high, Edmund was noted as a Jacobite, and very likely from vanity as much as affection, took the side of his family. Almost the whole of the clergy of the country, and more than a half of the nation, were on his side. Ours is the most loyal people in the world, surely. We admire our kings and are faithful to them long after they have ceased to be true to us. It is a wonder to anyone who looked back at the history of the Stuart family to think how they kicked their crowns away from them, how they flung away chances after chances, what treasures of loyalty they dissipated, and how fatally they were bent on consummating their own ruin, if ever men had fidelity, it was they. If ever men squandered opportunity, it was they. And of all the enemies they had, they themselves were the most fatal. When the Princess Anne succeeded, the wearied nation was glad enough to cry a truce from all these wars, controversies and conspiracies, and to accept in the person of a Princess of the Blood Royal a compromise between the parties into which the country was divided. The Tories could serve under her with easy consciences, though a Tory herself she represented the triumph of the Whig Opinion. The people of England always liking that their Princess should be attached to their own families were pleased to think the Princess was faithful to hers, and up to the very last day and hour of her reign, and but for that fatality which he inherited from his fathers along with their clans to the English crown, King James III might have worn it, but he neither knew how to wait an opportunity nor to use it when he had it. He was venturesome when he ought to have been cautious, and cautious when he ought to have dared everything. It is with a sort of rage at his inaptitude that one thinks of his melancholy story. Do the fates deal more specially with kings than with common men? One is apt to imagine so in considering the history of that royal race, in whose behalf so much fidelity, so much valor, so much blood, were desperately and bootlessly expended. The king dead then, the Princess Anne, ugly Anne Hyde's daughter, our dowager at Chelsea called her, was proclaimed by trumpeting heralds all over the town, from Westminster to Ludget Hill, amidst immense jubilations of the people. Next week my Lord Marlborough was promoted to the garter, and to be Captain General of Her Majesty's forces at home, and abroad this appointment only inflamed the dowager's rage, or, as she thought it, her fidelity to her rightful sovereign. The Princess is but a puppet in the hands of that fury of a woman, who comes into my drawing-room and insults me to my face. What can come to a country that is given over to such a woman, says the dowager. As for that double-faced traitor, my Lord Marlborough, he has betrayed every man and every woman with whom he has had to deal, except his horrid wife, who makes him tremble, tis all over the country when it has got into the clutches of such wretches as these. Esmond's old kinswoman saluted the new powers in this way. But some good fortune at last occurred to a family which stood in great need of it, by the advancement of these famous personages who benefited humbler people that had the luck of being in their favour. Before Mr. Esmond left England in the month of August, and being then at Portsmouth, where he had joined his regiment, and was busy at drill learning the practice and mysteries of the Musket and Pike, he heard that a pension on the stamp-office had been got for his late beloved mistress, and that the young mistress Beatrix was also to be taken into court. So much good, at least, had come of the poor widow's visit to London, not revenge upon her husband's enemies, but reconcilement to old friends who pitied and seemed inclined to serve her. As for the comrades in prison and the late misfortune, Colonel Westbury was with the Captain General gone to Holland. Captain McCartney was now at Portsmouth, with his regiment of fusiliers and the force under command of his Grace the Duke of Ormond, bound for Spain, it was said. My Lord Warwick was returned home, and Lord Mohan, so far from being punished for the homicide, which had brought so much grief and change into the Asman family, was gone in company of my Lord Macclesfield's splendid embassy to the Elector of Hanover, carrying the garter to His Highness, and a complimentary letter from the Queen. End of Book Two, Chapter Three, Recording by Ralph Snelson Book Two, Chapter Four of the History of Henry Esmond, Esquire, by William MacPeece Thackeray This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ralph Snelson The History of Henry Esmond, Esquire, by William MacPeece Thackeray Book Two, Chapter Four Recapitulations From such fitful lights as could be cast upon his dark history by the broken narrative of his poor patron, torn by remorse and struggling in the last pangs of dissolution, Mr. Esmond had been made to understand so far that his mother was long since dead, and so there could be no question as regarded her or her honor, tarnished by her husband's desertion and injury, to influence her son in any steps which he might take either for prosecuting or relinquishing his own just claims. It appeared from my poor Lord's hurried confession that he had been made acquainted with the real facts of the case only two years since, when Mr. Holt visited him and would have implicated him in one of those many conspiracies by which the secret leaders of King James' party in this country were ever endeavoring to destroy the Prince of Orange's life or power, conspiracy so like murder, so cowardly in the means used, so wicked in the end, that our nation has sure done well in throwing off all allegiance and fidelity to the unhappy family that could not vindicate its right except by such treachery, by such dark intrigue and base agents. There were designs against King William that were no more honorable than the ambushes of cutthroats and foot-pads, to humiliating to think that a great Prince, possessor of a great and sacred rite, and upholer of a great cause, should have stooped to such baseness of assassination and treasons as are proved by the unfortunate King James' own warrant and sign-manual given to his supporters in this country. What he, and they called levying war, was in truth no better than instigating murder. The noble Prince of Orange burst magnanimously through those feeble meshes of conspiracy in which his enemies tried to envelop him. It seemed as if their cowardly daggers broke upon the breast of his undaunted resolution. After King James' death, the Queen and her people at St. Germain's, priests and women, for the most part, continued their intrigues in behalf of the young Prince James III, as he was called in France, and by his party here. This Prince, or Chevalier de Saint-George, was born in the same year with Esmond's young pupil Frank, my Lord Viscount's son, and the Prince's affairs being in the hands of priests and women were conducted as priests and women will conduct them, artfully, cruelly, feebly, and to a certain bad issue. The moral of the Jesuit story, I think, as wholesome one as ever was read, the artfulest, the wisest, the most toilsome and dexterous plot-builders in the world, there always comes a day when the roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down and sends its cowardly enemies afflying. Mr. Swift hath finally described that passion for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, hangers on of weak courts, tis the nature of such to hate and envy the strong and conspire their ruin, and the conspiracy succeeds very well, and everything presages the satisfactory overfall of the great victim, until one day Gulliver rouses himself, shakes off the little vermin of an enemy, and walks away and molested, ah, the Irish soldiers might well say after the boing, change kings with us, and we will fight it over again. Indeed, the fight was not fair between the two. It was a weak priest-ridden, woman-ridden man with such puny allies and weapons as his own poor nature led him to choose, contending against the schemes, the generalship, the wisdom, and the heart of a hero. On one of these many cowards errands, then, for as I view them now, I call them no less, Mr. Holt had come to my lord at Castlewood, proposing some infallible plan for the Prince of Orange's destruction, in which my lord Viscount, loyalist as he was, had indignantly refused to join. As far as Mr. Esmond could gather from his dying words, Holt came to my lord with a plan of insurrection and offer of the renewal in his person of that Marquis's title which King James had conferred on the preceding Viscount, and on refusal of this bribe a threat was made on Holt's part to upset my lord Viscount's claim to his estate and title of Castlewood altogether. To back this astounding piece of intelligence of which Henry Esmond's patron now had the first light, Holt came armed with the late lord's dying declaration after the affair of the boine at Trim in Ireland made both to the Irish priest and a French ecclesiastic of Holt's order that was with King James' army. Holt showed, or pretended to show, the married certificate of the late Viscount Esmond with my mother in the city of Brussels in the year 1677 when the Viscount, then Thomas Esmond, was serving with the English army and Flanders. He could show, he said, that this Gertrude, deserted by her husband long since, was alive and a professed nun in the year 1685 at Brussels in which year Thomas Esmond married his uncle's daughter Isabella, now called Viscountus Dowager of Castlewood, and leaving him for twelve hours to consider this astounding news, so the poor dying lord said, disappeared with his papers in the mysterious way in which he came. Esmond knew how, well enough, by that window from which he had seen the father issue. But there was no need to explain to my poor lord only to gather from his parting lips the words which he would soon be able to utter no more. Here the twelve hours were over. Holt himself was a prisoner, implicated in Sir John Fenwick's conspiracy, and locked up at Hexton first, whence he was transferred to the tower, leaving the poor lord Viscount, who was not aware of the others being taken, in daily apprehension of his return. When, as my lord Castlewood declared, calling God to witness and with tears in his dying eyes, it had been his intention at once to give up his estate and his title to their proper owner, and to retire to his own house at Walcote with his family, and would to God I had done it, the poor lord said, I would not be here now wounded to death, a miserable, stricken man. My lord waited day after day, and as may be supposed, no messenger came, but on a month's end Holt got means to convey to him a message out of the tower, which was to this effect that he should consider all unsaid that had been said, and that things were as they were. I had a sore temptation, said my poor lord, since I had come into this cursed title of Castlewood, which hath never prospered with me, I have spent far more than the income of that estate and my paternal one too. I calculated all my means down to the last shilling, and found I never could pay you back, my poor Harry, whose fortune I had had for twelve years. My wife and children must have gone out of the house dishonored and beggars. God knows it had been a miserable one for me and mine. Like a coward I clung to that respite which Holt gave me. I kept the truth from Rachel and you. I tried to win money of Mohan, and only plunged deeper into debt. I scarce dared look thee in the face when I saw thee. This sword had been hanging over my head these two years. I swear I felt happy when Mohan's blade entered my side. After lying ten months in the tower, Holt, against whom nothing could be found except that he was a Jesuit priest known to be in King James' interest, was put on shipboard by the incorrigible forgiveness of King William, who promised him, however, a hanging if ever he should again set foot on the English shore. More than once, whilst he was in prison himself, Esmond had thought where those papers could be, which the Jesuit had shown to his patron, and which had such an interest for himself. They were not found on Mr. Holt's person when that father was apprehended, for had such been the case, my Lords of the Council had seen them, and this family history had long since been made public. However, Esmond cared not to seek the papers, his resolution being taken, his poor mother dead, what matter to him that documents existed proving his right to a title which he was determined not to claim, and of which he vowed never to deprive that family which he loved best in the world. Perhaps he took a greater pride out of his sacrifice than he would have had in those honors which he was resolved to forego. Again, as long as these titles were not forthcoming, Esmond's kinsman, dear young Francis, was the honourable and undisputed owner of the Castlewood estate and title. The mere word of a Jesuit could not overset Frank's right of occupancy, and so Esmond's mind felt actually at ease to think the papers were missing, and in their absence his dear mistress and her son the lawful lady and Lord of Castlewood. Very soon, after his liberation, Mr. Esmond made it his business to ride to that village of Ealing where he had passed his earliest years in this country and to see if his old guardians were still alive and inhabitants of that place. But the only relic which he found of old M. Pasteurall was a stone in the churchyard which told that Athanasius Pasteurall, a native of Flanders, lay there buried aged eighty-seven years. The old man's cottage which Esmond perfectly recollected and the garden wherein his childhood he had passed many hours of play and reverie and had many a beating from his termigant of a foster mother were now in the occupation of quite a different family, and it was with difficulty that he could learn in the village what had come of Pasteurall's widow and children. The clerk of the parish recollected her. The old man was scarce altered in the fourteen years that had passed since last, Esmond said eyes on him. It appeared she had pretty soon consoled herself after the death of her old husband whom she ruled over by taking a new one younger than herself, who spent her money and ill-treated her and her children. The girl died, one of the boys listed, the other had gone apprentice. All Mr. Rogers the clerk said he had heard that Mrs. Pasteurall was dead too. She and her husband had left Ealing this seven year, and so Mr. Esmond's hopes of gaining any information regarding his parentage from this family were brought to an end. He gave the old clerk a crowned peace for his news, smiling to think of the time when he and his little playfellows had slunk out of the churchyard or hidden behind the gravestones at the approach of this awful authority. Who was his mother? What had her name been? When did she die? Esmond longed to find someone who could answer these questions to him, and thought even of putting them to his aunt the Viscountess, who had innocently taken the name which belonged of right to Henry's mother. But she knew nothing or chose to know nothing on this subject, nor indeed could Mr. Esmond press her much to speak on it. Father Holt was the only man who could enlighten him, and Esmond felt he must wait until some fresh chance or new intrigue might put him face to face with his old friend, or bring that restless, indefatigable spirit back to England again. The appointment to his insincy and the preparations necessary for the campaign presently gave the young gentlemen other matters to think on. His new patroness treated him very kindly and liberally. She promised to make interest and pay money, too, to get him a company speedily. She made him procure a handsome outfit, both of clothes and of arms, and was pleased to admire him when he made his first appearance in his laced scarlet coat, and to permit him to salute her on the occasion of this interesting investiture. Red, said she, tossing up her old head, hath always been the color worn by the Esmonds, and so her ladyship wore it on her own cheeks very faithfully to the last. She would have him be dressed, she said, as became his father's son, and paid cheerfully for his five-pound beaver, his black buckled periwig, and his fine Holland shirts, and his swords and his pistols mounted with silver. Since the day he was born poor Harry had never looked such a fine gentleman. His liberal stepmother filled his purse with guineas, too, some of which Captain Steel and a few-choice spirits helped Harry to spend in an entertainment which ordered, and indeed would have paid for, but that he had no money when the reckoning was called for, nor would the landlord give him any more credit, at the garter over against the gate of the palace in Palmall. The old viscountess, indeed, if she had done Esmond any wrong formerly, seemed inclined to repair it by the present kindness of her behavior. She embraced him copiously at parting, wept plentifully, made him ripe by every packet, and gave him an inestimable relic which she besought him to wear round his neck, a medal blessed by, I know not, what pope, and worn by his late sacred majesty, King James. So Esmond arrived at his regiment with a better equipage than most young officers could afford. He was older than most of his seniors, and had a further advantage which belonged but to very few of the army gentlemen in his day, many of whom could do little more than write their names, that he had read much, both at home and at the university, was master of two or three languages, and had that further education which neither books nor years will give, but which some men get from the silent teaching of adversity. She is a great schoolmistress, as many a poor fellow knows, that hath held his hand out to her feral, and whimpered over his lesson before her awful chair. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, ESQUIRE By William Makepeace Zachary Book II, CHAPTER V I go on the Vigo Bay expedition, taste salt water and smell powder. The first expedition in which Mr. Esmond had the honour to be engaged rather resembled one of the invasions projected by the redoubted Captain Avery, or Captain Kidd, than a war between crowned heads carried on by generals of rank and honour. On the first day of July, 1702, a great fleet of a hundred and fifty sail set sail for spithead under the command of Admiral Chauvel, having on board twelve thousand troops with his grace the Duke of Ormond as the Captain General of the expedition. One of these twelve thousand heroes having never been to sea before, or at least only once in his infancy, when he made the voyage to England from that unknown country where he was born, one of those twelve thousand, the junior ensign of Colonel Quinn's regiment of fusiliers, was in a quite unheroic state of corporal prostation a few hours after sailing, and an enemy had he boarded the ship would have had easy work of him, from Portsmouth we put into Plymouth, and took in fresh reinforcements. We were off Finisterre on the 31st of July, so Esmond's table-book informs him, and on the 8th of August made the Rock of Lisbon. By this time the ensign was grown bold as an admiral, and a week afterwards had the fortune to be under fire for the first time, and under water too, his boat being swamped in the surf in Taurus Bay where the troops landed. The ducking of his new coat was all the harm the young soldier got in this expedition, for indeed the Spaniards made no stand before our troops, and were not in strength to do so. But the campaign, if not very glorious, was very pleasant. New sites of nature, by sea and land, a life of action beginning now for the first time, occupied and excited the young man. The many accidents, and the routine of shipboard, the military duty, the new acquaintances, both of his comrades in arms, and of the officers of the fleet, served to cheer and occupy his mind, and awaken it out of that selfish depression into which his late unhappy fortunes had plunged him. He felt as if the oceans separated him from his past care, and welcomed the new era of life which was dawning for him, wounds heal rapidly in a heart of two and twenty, hopes revive daily, and courage rallies in spite of a man. Perhaps, as Edgman thought of his late despondency and melancholy and how irremediable it had seemed to him, as he lay in his prison a few months back, he was almost mortified in his secret mind at finding himself so cheerful. To see with one's own eyes men and countries is better than reading all the books of travel in the world, and it was with extreme delight and exaltation that the young man found himself actually on his grand tour, and in the view of people and cities which he had read about as a boy. He beheld war for the first time, the pride, pomp and circumstance of it, at least if not much of the danger. He saw actually, and with his own eyes, those Spanish cavaliers and ladies whom he had beheld in imagination in that immortal story of Cervantes, which had been the delight of his youthful leisure. It is forty years since Mr. Esmond witnessed those scenes, but they remain as fresh in his memory as on the day when he first saw them as a young man. A cloud, as of grief that had lured over him and had wrapped the last years of his life in gloom, seemed to clear away from Esmond during this fortunate voyage and campaign. His energies seemed to awaken and to expand under a cheerful sense of freedom. Was his heart secretly glad to have escaped from that fond but ignoble bondage at home, was it that the inferiority to which the idea of his base birth had compelled him, vanished with the knowledge of that secret which, though perforce kept to himself, was yet enough to cheer and console him? At any rate young Esmond of the army was quite a different being to the sad little dependent of the kind Castlewood household and the melancholy student of Trinity Walks. Discontented with his fate and with the vocation into which that drove him, and thinking with a secret indignation that the cassock and bands and the very sacred office with which he had once proposed to invest himself, were in fact but marks of a servitude which was to continue all his life long. For disguise it as he might to himself, he had all along felt that to be Castlewood's chaplain was to be Castlewood's inferior still, and that his life was to be but a long hopeless servitude. So indeed he was far from grudging his old friend Tom Toucher's good fortune, as Tom no doubt potted. Had it been a mitre and lambeth which his friends offered him, and not a small living and a country parsonage, he would have felt as much a slave in one case as in the other, and was quite happy and thankful to be free. The bravest man I ever knew in the army and who had been present in most of King William's actions, as well as in the campaigns of the great Duke of Marlborough, could never be got to tell us of any achievement of his, except that once Prince Eugene ordered him up a tree to reconnoiter the enemy, which feat he could not achieve on account of the horseman's boots he wore. And on another day that he was very nearly taken prisoner because of these jack boots which prevented him from running away, the present narrator shall imitate this laudable reserve and doth not intend to dwell upon his military exploits, which were in truth not very different from those of a thousand other gentlemen. This first campaign of Mr. Esmond's lasted but a few days, and as a score of books have been written concerning it, it may be dismissed very briefly here. When our fleet came within view of Cades, our commanders sent a boat with a white flag, and a couple of officers to the governor of Cades, Don Scipio de Brancatio, with a letter from his grace in which he hoped that, as Don Scipio had formerly served with the Austrians against the French, was to be hoped that his Excellency would now declare himself against the French King, and for the Austrian in the war between King Philip and King Charles. But his Excellency, Don Scipio, prepared a reply in which he announced that, having served his former King with honour and fidelity, he hoped to exhibit the same loyalty and devotion towards his present sovereign, King Philip V. And by the time this letter was ready, the two officers had been taken to see the town, and the Alameda, and the theatre where bullfights are fought, and the convents where the admirable works of Don Bartholomew Marillo inspired one of them with a great wonder and delight, such as he had never felt before concerning this divine art of painting, and these sights over, and a handsome refaction and chocolate being served to the English gentlemen, they were accompanied back to their shalop with every courtesy, and were the only two officers of the English army that saw at that time that famous city. The general tried the power of another proclamation on the Spaniards, in which he announced that we only came in the interest of Spain and King Charles, and for ourselves wanted to make no conquest nor settlement in Spain at all, but all this eloquence was lost upon the Spaniards, it would seem. The captain general of Andalusia would no more listen to us than the governor of Cades, and in reply to his grace's proclamation the Marquis of Biladeria fired off another which those who knew the Spanish thought rather the best of the two, and of this number was Harry Esmond, whose kind Jesuit in old days had instructed him, and now had the honour of translating for his grace these harmless documents of war. There was a hard touch for his grace, and indeed for other generals in Her Majesty's service, in the concluding sentence of the dawn, that he and his council had the generous example of their ancestors to follow who had never yet sought their elevation in the blood or in the flight of their kings. Maurice Pro-Patriol was his device, which the duke might communicate to the princess who governed England. Whether the troops were angry at this repartee or no, tis certain something put them in a fury. For not being able to get possession of Cades are people seized upon Port St. Mary's and sacked it, burning down the merchant's storehouses, getting drunk with the famous wines there, pillaging and robbing quiet houses and convents, murdering and doing worse, and the only blood which Mr. Esmond drew in this shameful campaign was the knocking down an English sentinel with a hack-pike who was offering insult to a poor trembling nun. Is she going to turn out a beauty, or a princess, or perhaps Esmond's mother that he had lost and never seen? Alas, no, it was but a poor, wheezy old dropsicle woman with a wart upon her nose, but having been early taught a part of the Roman religion he never had the horror of it that some Protestants have shown and seemed to think to be a part of ours. After the pillage and plunder of St. Mary's and an assault upon a fort or two the troops all took shipping and finished their expedition at any rate more brilliantly than it had begun, hearing that the French fleet with a great treasure was in Viggo Bay. Our admirals, Rook and Hopson, pursued the enemy thither. The troops landed and carried the forts that protected the bay, Hopson passing the boom first on board his ship at Torbay and the rest of the ships, English and Dutch, following him. Twenty ships were burned or taken in the port of Redondia, and a vast deal more plunder than was ever accounted for. But poor men before that expedition were rich afterwards, and so often was it found or remarked that the Viggo officers came home with pockets full of money that the notorious Jack Schafto, who had made such a figure at the coffee-houses and gaming-tables in London, and gave out that he had been a soldier at Viggo, owned when he was about to be hanged, that bagshot heath had been his Viggo, and that he only spoke of Le Rambendio to turn away people's eyes from the real place where the booty lay, indeed Hunslo, or Viggo, which matters much. The latter was a bad business, though Mr. Addison did sing its praises in Latin. That honest gentleman's muse had an eye to the main chance, and I doubt whether she saw much inspiration in the losing side. But though Esmond, for his part, got no share of this fabulous booty, one great prize which he had out of the campaign was that excitement of action and change of scene which shook off a great deal of his previous melancholy. He learned at any rate to bear his fate cheerfully. He brought back a brown face, a heart resolute enough, and a little pleasant store of knowledge and observation from that expedition which was over with the autumn, when the troops were back in England again, and Esmond giving up his post of secretary to General Lumley, whose command was over, and parting with that officer with many kind expressions of goodwill on the general's side, had leave to go to London to see if he could push his fortunes any way further, and found himself once more in his dowager aunt's comfortable quarters at Chelsea, and in greater favour than ever with the old lady. He propitiated her with a present of a comb, a fan, and a black mantle such as the ladies of Cadizware, and which my Lady Biscountess pronounced became her style of beauty mightily, and she was greatly edified at hearing of that story of his rescue of the nun, and felt very little doubt but that her King James relic which he had always dutifully worn in his desk, had kept him out of danger, and averted the shot of the enemy. My Lady made feasts for him, introduced him to more company, and pushed his fortunes with such enthusiasm and success that she got a promise of a company for him through the Lady Marlborough's interest who was graciously pleased to accept of a diamond worth a couple of hundred guineas, which Mr. Esmond was enabled to present to her ladyship through his aunt's bounty and who promised that she would take charge of Esmond's fortune. He had the honour to make his appearance at the Queen's drawing-room occasionally, and to frequent my Lord Marlborough's levies. That great man received the young man with very a special favour, so Esmond's comrade said, and deigned to say that he had received the best reports of Mr. Esmond both for courage and accountability, whereon you may be sure the young gentleman made a profound bow and expressed himself eager to serve under the most distinguished captain in the world. Whilst his business was going on thus prosperously, Esmond had his share of pleasure too, and made his appearance along with other young gentlemen at the coffee-houses, the theatres, and the mall. He longed to hear of his dear mistress and her family, many a time in the midst of the gayities and pleasures of the town, his heart fondly reverted to them, and often as the young fellows of his society were making merry at the tavern and calling toast, as the fashion of that day was, over their wine, Esmond thought of persons, of two fair women whom he had been used to adore almost, and emptied his glass with a sigh. By this time the elder of his countess had grown tired again of the younger, and whenever she spoke of my lord's widow, it was in terms, by no means, complementary towards that poor lady. The younger woman not needing her protection any longer, the elder abused her. Most of the family quarrels that I have seen in life, saving always those arising from money disputes, when a division of two-pence half-penny will often drive the dearest relatives into war and estrangement, spring out of jealousy and envy. Jack and Tom, born of the same family, and of the same fortune, live very cordially together, not until Jack is ruined when Tom deserts him, but until Tom makes a sudden rise in prosperity, which Jack can't forget. Ten times to one tis the unprosperous man that is angry, not the other who is at fault. Tis Mrs. Jack, who can only afford a chair that sickens at Mrs. Tom's new coach and sick, cries out against her sister's heirs, and sets her husband against his brother, tis Jack, who sees his brother shaking hands with a lord, with whom Jack would like to exchange snuffboxes himself, that goes home and tells his wife how poor Tom is spoiled, he fears, and no better than a sneak parasite and beggar on horseback. I remember how furious the coffee-house wits were with Dick Steele when he set up his coach and fine house in Bloomsbury. They began to forgive him when the bailiffs were after him and abused Mr. Addison for selling Dick's country house, and Dick, in the sponging house, or Dick in the park, with his four mares and plated harness, was exactly the same gentle, kindly, improvident, jovial Dick Steele, and yet Mr. Addison was perfectly right in getting the money which was his, and not giving up the amount of his just claim, to be spent by Dick upon champagne and fiddlers laced clothes, fine furniture, and parasites, Jew and Christian, male and female, who clung to him. As according to the famous maxim of M. D. Rocheville Call, in our friends misfortunes there's something secretly pleasant to us, so on the other hand their good fortune is disagreeable. If tis hard for a man to bear his own good luck, tis harder still for his friends to bear it for him, and but few of them ordinarily can stand that trial, whereas one of the precious uses of adversity is that it is a great reconciler, that it brings back averted kindness, disarms animosity, and causes yesterday's enemy to fling his hatred aside and hold out a hand to the fallen friend of old days. There's pity and love as well as envy in the same heart, and towards the same person. The rivalry stops when the competitor tumbles, and as I view it we should look at these agreeable and disagreeable qualities of our humanity humbly alike. They are consequent and natural, and our kindness and meanness both manly. So you may either read the sentence that the elder of Esmond's two kinswomen pardoned the younger her beauty when that had lost some of its freshness, perhaps, and forgot most of her grievances against the other when the subject of them was no longer prosperous and enviable. Or we may say more benevolently, but the sum comes to the same figures worked either way, that Isabella repented of her unkindness towards Rachel when Rachel was unhappy, and besturing herself in behalf of the poor widow and her children gave them shelter and friendship. The ladies were quite good friends as long as the weaker one needed a protector. Before Esmond went away on his first campaign his mistress was still on terms of friendship, though a poor little chit, a woman that had evidently no spirit in her, and so on, with the elder lady Castlewood, and Miss Beatrix was allowed to be a beauty. But between the first year of Queen Anne's reign and the second sad changes for the worse had taken place in the two younger ladies, at least in the elder's description of them. Rachel, viscountess Castlewood, had no more face than a dumpling, and Miss Beatrix was grown quite coarse, and was losing all her beauty. Little Lord Blandford, she never would call him Lord Blandford. His father was Lord Churchill, the king whom he betrayed and made him Lord Churchill, and he was Lord Churchill still, might be making eyes at her, but his mother, that bixen of Asereth Jennings, would never hear of such folly. Lady Marlborough had got her to be a maid of honour at court to the princess, but she would repent of it. The widow Frances, she was but Mrs. Frances Esmond, was a scheming, artful, heartless, hussy. She was spoiling her brat of a boy, and she would end by marrying her chaplain. What, Tushar? cried Mr. Esmond, feeling a strange pang of rage and astonishment. Yes, Tushar, my maid's son, and who has got all the qualities of his father, the lackey and black, and his accomplished mama, the waiting woman, cries my lady. What do you suppose that a sentimental widow who will live down in that dingy dungeon of a Castlewood, where she spoils her boy, kills the poor with her drugs, has prayers twice a day and sees nobody but the chaplain? What do you suppose she can do, moan cousin, but let the horrid parson with his great square toes and hideous little green eyes make love to her? Sile est vu, moan cousin. When I was a girl at Castlewood all the chaplains fell in love with me. They've nothing else to do. My lady went on with more talk of this kind, though in truth Esmond had no idea what she said further, so entirely did her first words occupy his thought. Were they true? Not all, nor half, nor a tenth part of what the garrulous old woman said was true. Could this be so? No ear had Esmond for anything else, though his patroness chatted on for an hour. Some young gentleman of the town with whom Esmond had made acquaintance had promised to present him to that most charming of actresses, and lively and agreeable of women, Mrs. Bracegirdle, about whom Harry's old adversary, Moan, had drawn swords a few years before my poor lord and he fell out. The famous Mr. Congrive had stamped with his high approval to the which there was no gain saying this delightful person, and she was acting in Dick Steele's comedies, and finally, and for twenty-four hours after beholding her, Mr. Esmond felt himself, or thought himself, to be as violently enamored of this lovely Brunette as were a thousand other young fellows about the city. To have once seen her was too long to behold her again, and to be offered the delightful privilege of her acquaintance was a pleasure the very idea of which set the young lieutenant's heart on fire. A man cannot live with comrades under the tents without finding out that he too is five and twenty. A young fellow cannot be cast down by grief and misfortune ever so severe, but some night he begins to sleep sound, and some day when dinner time comes to feel hungry for a beef steak. Time, youth and good health, new scenes and the excitement of action and a campaign had pretty well brought Esmond's mourning to an end, and his comrades said that Don Dismal, as they called him, was Don Dismal no more. So when a party was made to dine at the Rose and go to the Playhouse afterwards, Esmond was as pleased as another to take his share of the bottle and the play. How was it that the old aunt's news, or it might be scandal about Tom Tusher, caused such a strange and sudden excitement in Tom's old playfellow? Hadn't he sworn a thousand times in his own mind that the lady of Castlewood, who had treated him with such kindness once, and then had left him so cruelly, was, and was to remain henceforth indifferent to him forever? Had his pride and his sense of justice not long since helped him to cure the pain of that desertion? Was it even a pain to him now? Why, but last night, as he walked across the fields and meadows to Chelsea from Palmol, had he not composed two or three stanzas of a song celebrating Bracegirtle's brown eyes, and declaring them a thousand times more beautiful than the brightest blue ones that ever languished under the lashes of an insipid fair beauty. But Tom Tusher, Tom Tusher, the waiting woman's son, raising up his little eyes to his mistress, Tom Tusher presuming to think of Castlewood's widow, rage and contempt filled Mr. Harry's heart at the very notion. The honour of the family of which he was the chief made it his duty to prevent so monstrous an alliance and to chastise the upstart who could dare to think of such an insult to their house. Tis true, Mr. Esmond often boasted of republican principles, and could remember many fine speeches he had made at college and elsewhere with worth and not birth for attacks. But Tom Tusher, to take the place of the noble Castlewood, fa, was as monstrous as King Hamlet's widow taking off her weeds from Claudius. Esmond laughed at all widows, all wives, all women, and were the bands about to be published, as no doubt they were, that very next Sunday at Walcote Church. Esmond swore that he would be present to shout no in the face of the congregation, and to take a private revenge upon the ears of the bridegroom. Instead of going to dinner then at the Rose that night, Mr. Esmond bade his servant pack a portmanteau and get horses, and was at Farnham, halfway on the road to Walcote, thirty miles off before his comrades had got to their supper after the play. He bade his man give no hint to my Lady Dowager's household of the expedition on which he was going, and as Chelsea was distant from London, the roads bad and infested by foot-pads, and Esmond often in the habit when engaged in a party of pleasure, of lying at a friend's lodging in town, there was no need that his old aunt should be disturbed at his absence. Indeed, nothing more delighted the old lady than to fancy that Morn Cousin, the incorrigible young sinner, was abroad boxing the watch, or scouring St. Giles. When she was not at her books of devotion she thought Etheridge and Sedley very good reading. She had a hundred pretty stories about Rochester, Harry German, and Hamilton, and if Esmond would but have run away with the wife even of a citizen did my belief she would have pawned her diamonds, the best of them went to our Lady of Chalot, to pay his damages. My Lord's little house of Walcote, which he inhabited before he took his title and occupied the house of Castlewood, lies about a mile from Winchester, and his widow had returned to Walcote after my Lord's death, as a place always dear to her and where her earliest and happiest days had been spent. Cheerfuler than Castlewood, which was too large for her straightened means, and giving her too the protection of the ex-dean, her father. The young Viscount had a year's schooling at the famous college there with Mr. Toucher as his governor. So much news of them Mr. Esmond had had during the past year from the old Viscountess, his own father's widow, from the young one there had never been a word. Twice or thrice in his benefactor's lifetime Edmund had been to Walcote, and now taking but a couple of hours rest only at the inn on the road he was up again long before daybreak and made such good speed that he was at Walcote by two o'clock of the day. He rid to the end of the village where he alighted and sent a man thence to Mr. Toucher with a message that a gentleman from London would speak with him on urgent business. The messenger came back to say the doctor was in town, most likely at prayers in the cathedral. My lady Viscountess was there too. She always went to cathedral prayers every day. The horses belonged to the post-house at Winchester. Esmond mounted again and rode on to the George, whence he walked, leaving his grumbling domestic at last happy with a dinner straight to the cathedral. The organ was playing. The winter's day was already growing gray as he passed under the street arch into the cathedral yard and made his way into the ancient solemn edifice. End of book two, chapter five, recording by Ralph Snelson. Book two, chapter six of the history of Henry Esmond Esquire by William McPeace-Tacarey versus a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in a public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Monsbruhe Helsingfors Finland. The history of Henry Esmond Esquire by William McPeace-Tacarey. Book two, chapter six, the 29th of December. There was scarce a score of persons in the cathedral beside the dean and some of his clergy, and the choristers, young and old, had performed a beautiful evening prayer. But Mr. Tushar was one of the officiants, and read from the eagle in an authoritative voice and a great black periwig, and in the stalls, still in her black widow's hood, sat Esmond's dear mistress, her son by her side, very much grown, and indeed a noble-looking youth with his mother's eyes and his father's curling brown hair that fell over his point de Venise. A pretty picture such as Van Dik might have painted. Monsieur Régaud's portrait of my lord Viscount, done at Paris afterwards, gives but a French version of his manly Frank English face. When he looked up, there were two sapphire beams out of his eyes, such as no painter's palette has the color to match, I think. On this day, there was not much chance of seeing that particular beauty of my young lord's countenance. For the truth is, he kept his eyes shut for the most part, and the anthem, being rather long, was asleep. But the music ceasing, my lord woke up, looking about him, and his lighting on Mr. Esmond, who was sitting opposite him, gazing with no small tenderness and melancholy upon two persons who had so much of his heart for so many years. Lord Castlewood, with a start, pulled at his mother's sleeve. Her face had scarce been lifted from her book, and said, Look mother, so loud, that Esmond could hear on the other side of the church, and the old dean on his throne stole. Lady Castlewood looked for an instant as her son bade her, and held up a warning finger to Frank. Esmond felt his whole face flush, and his heart throbbing, as that dear lady beheld him once more. The rest of the prayers were speedily over. Mr. Esmond did not hear them, nor did his mistress, very likely, whose hood went more closely over her face, and who never lifted her head again until the service was over, the blessing given, and Mr. Dean, and his procession of ecclesiastics, out of the inner chapel. Young Castlewood came clambering over the stalls before the clergy were fairly gone, and running up to Esmond eagerly embraced him. My dear, dearest old Harry, he said, are you come back? Have you been to the wars? You'll take me with you when you go again? Why didn't you write to us? Come to mother. Mr. Esmond could hardly say more than God bless you, my boy, for his heart was very full and grateful at all this tenderness of the lads part, and he was as much moved at seeing Frank as he was fearful about that other interview, which was now to take place, for he knew not if the widow would reject him, as she had done so cruelly a year ago. It was kind of you to come back to us, Henry, Lady Esmond said. I thought you might come. We read of the fleet coming to Portsmouth. Why did you not come from Portsmouth? Frank asked, or my Lord Viscount, as he now must be called. Esmond had thought of that too. He would have given one of his eyes so that he might see his dear friends again once more, but believing that his mistress had forbidden him her house, he had obeyed her and remained at the distance. You had about to ask, and you know I would be here, he said. She gave him her hand, her little fair hand. There was only her marriage ring on it. The quarrel was all over. The year of grief and estrangement was passed. They never had been separated. His mistress had never been out of his mind all the time. No, not once. No, not in the prison, nor in the camp, nor on shore before the enemy, nor at sea under the star so solemn midnight, nor as he watched the glorious rising of the dawn. Not even at the table where he sat, carousing with friends, or at the theater yonder where he tried to fancy that other eyes were brighter than hers. Brighter eyes there might be, and faces more beautiful. But none so dear, no voice so sweet as that of his beloved mistress who had been sister, mother, goddess to him during his youth, goddess now no more, for he knew of her weaknesses, and by thought, by suffering, and that experience it brings, was older now than she. But more fondly cherished as woman perhaps, than ever she had been adored as divinity. What is it? Where lies it? The secret which makes one little hand the dearest of all? Whoever can unriddle that mystery? Here she was, her son by his side, his dear boy. Here she was weeping and happy. She took his hand in both hers. He felt her tears. It was a rapture of reconciliation. Here comes square toes, says Frank. Here's Tasha. Tasha indeed now appeared, creaking on his great heels. Mr. Tom had divested himself of his alb of supplies, and came forward habited in his cassock and great black periwig. How had Esmond ever been for a moment jealous of this fellow? Give us thy hand, Tom Tasha, he said. The chaplain made him a very low and stately bow. I'm charmed to see Captain Esmond, says he. My lord and I have read the redness in Coloumen Precor, and applied it, I'm sure, to you. You came back with garitannian laurels. When I heard you abound dither, I wished, I'm sure, I was another Septimius. My lord Viscount, your lordship remember Septimii, goddess Aditure Mecum. There's an angle of earth that I love better than goddess Tasha, says Mr. Esmond. This, that one where your reverence had a parsonage, and where our youth was brought up. A house that has so many sacred recollections to me, says Mr. Tasha, and Harry remembered how Tom's father used to flog him there. A house near to that of my respected patron, my most honored patroness, must ever be a dear abode to me. But madam, the verger waits to close the gates on your ladyship. And Harry's coming home to supper. Hussay, hussay, Christ my lord. Mother, I shall run home and bid Beatrix put her ribbons on. Beatrix is made of honor, Harry, such a fine set-up minx. Your heart was never in the church, Harry, the widow said, in her sweet low tone as they walked away together. Now it seemed they had never been parted and again, as if they had been ages as under. I always thought that you had no vocation that way, and that was a pity to shut you out from the world. You would but have pined and chafed at Castlewood, and this better you should make a name for yourself. I often said so to my dear lord. How he loved you. It was my lord that made you stay with us. I asked no better than to stay near you always, said Mr. Esmond. But the go was best, Harry. When the world can give peace, you will know where to find it. But one of your strong imagination and eager desires must try the world first before he tires of it. To us not to be thought of, or if it once was, it was only by my selfishness that you should remain as chaplain to a country gentleman and tutor to a little boy. You are of the blood of the Esmans, kinsmen, and that was always wild in youth. Look at Francis. He's but fifteen, and I scarce can keep him in my nest. His talk is all of war and pleasure, and he longs to serve in the next campaign. Perhaps he and the young lord Churchill shall go to the next. Lord Marlborough has been good to us. You know how kind they were in my misfortune, and so was your, your father's widow. No one knows how good the world is till grief comes to try us. It is through my lady Marlborough's goodness that Beatrix hath her place at court, and Frank is under my Lord Chamberlain, and the dowager lady, your father's widow, has promised to provide for you. Has she not? Esmond said, yes. As far as the present favor went, Lady Castlewood was very good to him, and should her mind change, he added gaily, as ladies' minds will. I'm strong enough to bear my own burden and make my way somehow, not by the sword very likely. Thousands have a better genius for that than I, but there are many ways in which a young man of good parts in education can get on in the world, and I'm pretty sure one way or other of promotion. Indeed, he had found patrons already in the army, and amongst persons very able to serve him too, and told his mistress of the flattering aspect of fortune. They walked as though they had never been parted, slowly, with the gay twilight closing around them. And now we are drawing near to home, she continued. I knew you would come, Harry, if it was but to forgive me for having spoken unjustly to you after that horrid misfortune. I was half frantic with grief then when I saw you, and I know now they have told me that the wretch whose name I can never mention even has said it, how you tried to avert the quarrel, and would have taken it on yourself, my poor child, but it was God's will that I should be punished, and that my dear Lord should fall. He gave me his blessing on his deathbed, Esmond said. Thank God for that legacy. Amen, amen, dear Henry, said the lady, pressing his arm. I knew it. Mr. Atterbury of St. Brides, who was called to him, told me so, and I thanked God too, and in my prayers ever since remembered it. You had spared me many a bitter night had you told me sooner, Mr. Esmond said. I know I know it. She answered in a tone of such sweet humility, as made Esmond repent that he should ever have dared to reproach her. I know how wicked my heart has been, and have suffered too, my dear. I confessed to Mr. Atterbury. I must not tell anymore. He, I said I would not write to you or go to you, and it was better even that, having parted, we should part. But I knew you would come back. I owned that. That is no one's fault. And today, Henry, in the anthem, when they sang it, when the Lord turned the captivity of Zion, we were like them in that dream. I thought, yes, like them in that dream. Them, that dream. And then it went, they that sow in tears shall reap in joy, and he that goeth forth and weepeth shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheeps with him. I looked up from the book and I saw you. I was not surprised when I saw you. I knew you'd come, my dear, and saw the gold sunshine around your head. She smiled an almost wild smile as she looked up at him. The moon was up by this time, glittering keen in the frosty sky. He could see for the first time now clearly her sweet, care-worn face. Do you know what day it is she continued? It is the 29th of December. It is your birthday, but last year we did not drink it. No, no, my Lord was cold, my Harry was likely to die, and my brain was in a fever and we had no wine, but now, now you are coming again bringing your sheeps with you, my dear. She burst into a wild flood of weeping as she spoke. She laughed and sobbed on the young man's heart crying out wildly, bringing your sheeps with you, your sheeps with you. As he had sometimes felt gazing up from the deck at midnight into the boundless starlit depths overhead, in a rapture or devout wonder at that endless brightness and beauty. In some such a way now, the depth of this pure devotion, which was for the first time revealed to him, quite smote upon him and filled his heart with thanksgiving. Gracious God, who was he weak and friendless creature that such a love should be poured out upon him? Not in vain, not in vain has he lived hard and thankless should he be to think so, that has such a treasure given him. What is ambition compared to that, but selfish vanity? To be rich, to be famous? What do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under the ground, along with idle titles in grave and on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessing, or precedes you and intercedes for you? Nor nominees moria, if dying, I yet live in a tender heart of two, nor am lost and hopeless living, if a saint that departed soul still loves and prays for me. If, if this so, dear lady, Mr. Esmond said, why should I ever leave you, if God hath given me this great boon, and near or far from me, as I know now, the heart of my dearest mistress follows me, let me have that blessing near me, nor ever part with it, till death separate us. Come away, leave this Europe, this place which has so many sad recollections for you, begin a new life, a new world. My good Lord often talked of visiting that land in Virginia, which King Charles gave us, gave his ancestor. Frank will give us that. No man there will ask if there's a blot on my name, or inquire in the woods what my title is. And my children, and my duty, and my good father, Henry, she broke out. He has none but me now, for soon my sister will leave him, and the old man will be alone. He has conformed since the new Queen's reign, and here in Winchester, where they love him, they have found a church for him. When the children need me, I will stay with him. I cannot follow them into the great world, where their way lies. It scares me. They will come and visit me, and you will sometimes, Henry. Yes, sometimes, as now in the holy advent season, when I have seen and blessed you once more. I would leave all to follow you, said Mr. Esmond. And can you not be as generous for me, dear lady? Hush, boy, she said. And it was with the mother's sweet, plaintive tone and look that she spoke. The world is beginning for you. For me, I've been so weak and sinful that I must leave it, and pray out an expiation, dear Henry, and we houses of religion as they were once, and many devines of our church would have them again. I often think I would retire to one and pass my life in penance, but I would love you still. Yes, there is no sin in such a love as mine now, and my dear Lord in heaven may see my heart and knows the tears that have washed my sin away, and now, now my duty is here, by my children will stay need me, and by my poor old father and, and not by me, Henry said. Hush, she said again, and raised her hand up to his lip. I've been your nurse. You could not see me, Henry, when you were in the smallpox, and I came and sat by you. I prayed that I might die, but it would have been in sin, Henry. Oh, it is horrid to look back to that time. It is over now in the past, and it has been forgiven me. When you need me again, I will come ever so far. When your heart is wounded, then come to me, my dear. Be silent, let me say all. You never loved me, dear Henry. No, you do not now, and I thank heaven for it. I used to watch you, and knew by a thousand signs that it was so. Do you remember how glad you were to go away to college? It was I sent you. I told my papa that, and Mr. Atabritu, when I spoke to him in London, and they both gave me absolution, both, and they are godly men, having authority to bind them to lose, and they forgave me, as my dear Lord forgave me, before he went to heaven. I think the angels are not all in heaven, Mr. Esmond said, and as a brother folds his sister to his heart, and as a mother cleaves to her son's breast, so for a few moments Esmond's beloved mistress came to him and blessed him. End of book 2, chapter 6, recording by Monsbrew Helsingfors Finland.