nished him,
that he should have abstained. And moreover his simple quietude was
really touching to true-hearted people. The elements of pathos do not
permit of their being dispensed from a stout smoking bowl. I have to
record no pathetic field-day. My father was never insincere in emotion.

I spared his friends, chums, associates, excellent men of a kind, the
trial of their attachment by shunning them. His servants I dismissed
personally, from M. Alphonse down to the coachman Jeremy, whose speech
to me was, that he should be happy to serve my father again, or me, if
he should happen to be out of a situation when either of us wanted him,
which at least showed his preference for employment: on the other hand,
Alphonse, embracing the grand extremes of his stereotyped national
oratory, where 'SI JAMAIS,' like the herald Mercury new-mounting, takes
its august flight to set in the splendour of 'ausqu'n LA MORT,' declared
all other service than my father's repugnant, and vowed himself to a
hermitage, remote from condiments. They both meant well, and did
but speak the diverse language of their blood. Mrs. Waddy withdrew a
respited heart to Dipwell; it being, according to her experiences, the
third time that my father had relinquished house and furniture to go
into eclipse on the Continent after blazing over London. She strongly
recommended the Continent for a place of restoration, citing his
likeness to that animal the chameleon, in the readiness with which he
forgot himself among them that knew nothing of him. We quitted Bulsted
previous to the return of the family to Riversley. My grandfather lay
at the island hotel a month, and was brought home desperately ill.
Lady Edbury happened to cross the channel with us. She behaved badly,
I thought; foolishly, my father said. She did as much as obliqueness of
vision and sharpness of feature could help her to do to cut him in the
presence of her party: and he would not take nay. It seemed in very bad
taste on his part; he explained to me off-handedly that he insisted upon
the exchange of a word or two for the single purpose of protecting her
from calumny. By and by it grew more explicable to me how witless she
had been to give gossip a handle in the effort to escape it. She sent
for him in Paris, but he did not pay the visit.

My grandfather and I never saw one another again. He had news of me from
various quarters, and I of him from one; I was leading a life in marked
contrast from