record that Emmy took a night and received company
with great propriety and modesty. She had a French
master, who complimented her upon the purity of her
accent and her facility of learning; the fact is she had
learned long ago and grounded herself subsequently in the
grammar so as to be able to teach it to George; and Madam
Strumpff came to give her lessons in singing, which she
performed so well and with such a true voice that the
Major's windows, who had lodgings opposite under the
Prime Minister, were always open to hear the lesson.
Some of the German ladies, who are very sentimental and
simple in their tastes, fell in love with her and began to
call her du at once. These are trivial details, but they
relate to happy times. The Major made himself George's
tutor and read Caesar and mathematics with him, and
they had a German master and rode out of evenings by
the side of Emmy's carriage--she was always too timid,
and made a dreadful outcry at the slightest disturbance
on horse-back. So she drove about with one of her dear
German friends, and Jos asleep on the back-seat of the
barouche.
He was becoming very sweet upon the Grafinn Fanny
de Butterbrod, a very gentle tender-hearted and
unassuming young creature, a Canoness and Countess in her
own right, but with scarcely ten pounds per year to her
fortune, and Fanny for her part declared that to be
Amelia's sister was the greatest delight that Heaven could
bestow on her, and Jos might have put a Countess's shield
and coronet by the side of his own arms on his carriage
and forks; when--when events occurred, and those
grand fetes given upon the marriage of the Hereditary
Prince of Pumpernickel with the lovely Princess Amelia
of Humbourg-Schlippenschloppen took place.
At this festival the magnificence displayed was such as
had not been known in the little German place since
the days of the prodigal Victor XIV. All the neighbouring
Princes, Princesses, and Grandees were invited to the
feast. Beds rose to half a crown per night in Pumpernickel,
and the Army was exhausted in providing guards
of honour for the Highnesses, Serenities, and Excellencies
who arrived from all quarters. The Princess was married
by proxy, at her father's residence, by the Count de
Schlusselback. Snuff-boxes were given away in profusion
(as we learned from the Court jeweller, who sold
and afterwards bought them again), and bushels of the
Order of Saint Michael of Pumpernickel were sent to
the nobles of the Court, while hampers of the cordons
and decorations of the Wheel of St. Catherine of
Schlippenschloppen were brought to ours. The French envoy
got both. "He is covered with ribbons like a prize
cart-horse," Tapeworm said, who was not allowed by the rules
of his service to take any decorations: "Let him have
the cordons; but with whom is the victory?" The fact is,
it was a triumph of British diplomacy, the French party
having proposed and tried their utmost to carry a
marriage with a Princess of the House of
Potztausend-Donnerwetter, whom, as a matter of
course, we opposed.
Everybody was asked to the fetes of the marriage.
Garlands and triumphal arches were hung across the road
to welcome the young bride. The great Saint Michael's
Fountain ran with uncommonly sour wine, while that
in the Artillery Place frothed with beer. The great waters
played; and poles were put up in the park and gardens
for the happy peasantry, which they might climb at
their leisure, carrying off watches, silver forks, prize
sausages hung with pink ribbon, &c., at the top. Georgy
got one, wrenching it off, having swarmed up the pole to
the delight of the spectators, and sliding down with the
rapidity of a fall of water. But it was for the glory's
sake merely. The boy gave the sausage to a peasant,
who had very nearly seized it, and stood at the foot of
the mast, blubbering, because he was unsuccessful.
At the French Chancellerie they had six more lampions
in their illumination than ours had; but our transparency,
which represented the young Couple advancing and
Discord flying away, with the most ludicrous likeness to the
French Ambassador, beat the French picture hollow; and
I have no doubt got Tapeworm the advancement and the
Cross of the Bath which he subsequently attained.
Crowds of foreigners arrived for the fetes, and of
English, of course. Besides the Court balls, public balls
were given at the Town Hall and the Redoute, and in the
former place there was a room for trente-et-quarante
and roulette established, for the week of the festivities
only, and by one of the great German companies from
Ems or Aix-la-Chapelle. The officers or inhabitants of the
town were not allowed to play at these games, but
strangers, peasants, ladies were admitted, and any one
who chose to lose or win money.
That little scapegrace Georgy Osborne amongst others,
whose pockets were always full of dollars and whose
relations were away at the grand festival of the Court,
came to the Stadthaus Ball in company of his uncle's
courier, Mr. Kirsch, and having only peeped into a
play-room at Baden-Baden when he hung on Dobbin's arm,
and where, of course, he was not permitted to gamble, came
eagerly to this part of the entertainment and hankered
round the tables where the croupiers and the punters
were at work. Women were playing; they were masked,
some of them; this license was allowed in these wild times
of carnival.
A woman with light hair, in a low dress by no means
so fresh as it had been, and with a black mask on,
through the eyelets of which her eyes twinkled strangely,
was seated at one of the roulette-tables with a card and
a pin and a couple of florins before her. As the croupier
called out the colour and number, she pricked on the
card with great care and regularity, and only ventured her
money on the colours after the red or black had come
up a certain number of times. It was strange to look at
her.
But in spite of her care and assiduity she guessed
wrong and the last two florins followed each other under
the croupier's rake, as he cried out with his inexorable
voice the winning colour and number. She gave a sigh, a
shrug with her shoulders, which were already too much
out of her gown, and dashing the pin through the card
on to the table, sat thrumming it for a while. Then she
looked round her and saw Georgy's honest face staring
at the scene. The little scamp! What business had he
to be there?
When she saw the boy, at whose face she looked hard
through her shining eyes and mask, she said, "Monsieur
n'est pas joueur?"
"Non, Madame," said the boy; but she must have
known, from his accent, of what country he was, for she
answered him with a slight foreign tone. "You have
nevare played--will you do me a littl' favor?"
"What is it?" said Georgy, blushing again. Mr. Kirsch
was at work for his part at the rouge et noir and did not
see his young master.
"Play this for me, if you please; put it on any number,
any number." And she took from her bosom a purse, and
out of it a gold piece, the only coin there, and she put it
into George's hand. The boy laughed and did as he was
bid.
The number came up sure enough. There is a power
that arranges that, they say, for beginners.
"Thank you," said she, pulling the money towards her,
"thank you. What is your name?"
"My name's Osborne," said Georgy, and was fingering
in his own pockets for dollars, and just about to make a
trial, when the Major, in his uniform, and Jos, en Marquis,
from the Court ball, made their appearance. Other
people, finding the entertainment stupid and preferring the
fun at the Stadthaus, had quitted the Palace ball earlier;
but it is probable the Major and Jos had gone home and
found the boy's absence, for the former instantly went
up to him and, taking him by the shoulder, pulled him
briskly back from the place of temptation. Then, looking
round the room, he saw Kirsch employed as we have
said, and going up to him, asked how he dared to bring
Mr. George to such a place.
"Laissez-moi tranquille," said Mr. Kirsch, very much
excited by play and wine. "ll faut s'amuser, parbleu.
Je ne suis pas au service de Monsieur."
Seeing his condition the Major did not choose to argue
with the man, but contented himself with drawing away
George and asking Jos if he would come away. He was
standing close by the lady in the mask, who was playing
with pretty good luck now, and looking on much
interested at the game.
"Hadn't you better come, Jos," the Major said, "with
George and me?"
"I'll stop and go home with that rascal, Kirsch," Jos
said; and for the same reason of modesty, which he
thought ought to be preserved before the boy, Dobbin
did not care to remonstrate with Jos, but left him and
walked home with Georgy.
"Did you play?" asked the Major when they were out
and on their way home.
The boy said "No."
"Give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you
never will."
"Why?" said the boy; "it seems very good fun." And, in
a very eloquent and impressive manner, the Major showed
him why he shouldn't, and would have enforced his
precepts by the example of Georgy's own father, had he
liked to say anything that should reflect on the other's
memory. When he had housed him, he went to bed and
saw his light, in the little room outside of Amelia's,
presently disappear. Amelia's followed half an hour
afterwards. I don't know what made the Major note it
so accurately.
Jos, however, remained behind over the play-table; he
was no gambler, but not averse to the little excitement
of the sport now and then, and he had some Napoleons
chinking in the embroidered pockets of his court
waistcoat. He put down one over the fair shoulder of the
little gambler before him, and they won. She made a little
movement to make room for him by her side, and
just took the skirt of her gown from a vacant chair there.
"Come and give me good luck," she said, still in a
foreign accent, quite different from that frank and
perfectly English "Thank you," with which she had saluted
Georgy's coup in her favour. The portly gentleman,
looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him,
sat down; he muttered--"Ah, really, well now, God bless
my soul. I'm very fortunate; I'm sure to give you good
fortune," and other words of compliment and confusion.
"Do you play much?" the foreign mask said.
"I put a Nap or two down," said Jos with a superb air,
flinging down a gold piece.
"Yes; ay nap after dinner," said the mask archly. But
Jos looking frightened, she continued, in her pretty
French accent, "You do not play to win. No more do I.
I play to forget, but I cannot. I cannot forget old times,
monsieur. Your little nephew is the image of his father;
and you--you are not changed--but yes, you are.
Everybody changes, everybody forgets; nobody has
any heart."
"Good God, who is it?" asked Jos in a flutter.
"Can't you guess, Joseph Sedley?" said the little
woman in a sad voice, and undoing her mask, she
looked at him. "You have forgotten me."
"Good heavens! Mrs. Crawley!" gasped out Jos.
"Rebecca," said the other, putting her hand on his;
but she followed the game still, all the time she was
looking at him.
"I am stopping at the Elephant," she continued. "Ask
for Madame de Raudon. I saw my dear Amelia to-day;
how pretty she looked, and how happy! So do you!
Everybody but me, who am wretched, Joseph Sedley."
And she put her money over from the red to the black,
as if by a chance movement of her hand, and while she
was wiping her eyes with a pocket-handkerchief fringed
with torn lace.
The red came up again, and she lost the whole of that
stake.~ "Come away," she said. "Come with me a little
--we are old friends, are we not, dear Mr. Sedley?"
And Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this
time, followed his master out into the moonlight, where
the illuminations were winking out and the transparency
over our mission was scarcely visible.
CHAPTER LXIV
A Vagabond Chapter
We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's
biography with that lightness and delicacy which the
world demands--the moral world, that has, perhaps, no
particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance
to hearing vice called by its proper name. There
are things we do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair,
though we never speak of them: as the Ahrimanians
worship the devil, but don't mention him: and a polite
public will no more bear to read an authentic description
of vice than a truly refined English or American female
will permit the word breeches to be pronounced in her
chaste hearing. And yet, madam, both are walking the
world before our faces every day, without much shocking
us. If you were to blush every time they went by, what
complexions you would have! It is only when their
naughty names are called out that your modesty has any
occasion to show alarm or sense of outrage, and it has
been the wish of the present writer, all through this story,
deferentially to submit to the fashion at present prevailing,
and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a
light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine
feelings may be offended. I defy any one to say that
our Becky, who has certainly some vices, has not been
presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and
inoffensive manner. In describing this Siren, singing and
