inly committed a
great crime: not his intrigue with Lady Monteagle, for that surely was
not an unprecedented offence; not his duel with her husband, for after
all it was a duel in self-defence; and, at all events, divorces
and duels, under any circumstances, would scarcely have excited or
authorised the storm which was now about to burst over the late
spoiled child of society. But Lord Cadurcis had been guilty of the
offence which, of all offences, is punished most severely: Lord
Cadurcis had been overpraised. He had excited too warm an interest;
and the public, with its usual justice, was resolved to chastise him
for its own folly.

There are no fits of caprice so hasty and so violent as those of
society. Society, indeed, is all passion and no heart. Cadurcis, in
allusion to his sudden and singular success, had been in the habit of
saying to his intimates, that he 'woke one morning and found himself
famous.' He might now observe, 'I woke one morning and found myself
infamous.' Before twenty-four hours had passed over his duel with Lord
Monteagle, he found himself branded by every journal in London, as an
unprincipled and unparalleled reprobate. The public, without waiting
to think or even to inquire after the truth, instantly selected as
genuine the most false and the most flagrant of the fifty libellous
narratives that were circulated of the transaction. Stories,
inconsistent with themselves, were all alike eagerly believed, and
what evidence there might be for any one of them, the virtuous people,
by whom they were repeated, neither cared nor knew. The public, in
short, fell into a passion with their darling, and, ashamed of their
past idolatry, nothing would satisfy them but knocking the divinity on
the head.

Until Lord Monteagle, to the great regret of society, who really
wished him to die in order that his antagonist might commit murder,
was declared out of danger, Lord Cadurcis never quitted his house, and
he was not a little surprised that scarcely a human being called upon
him except his cousin, who immediately flew to his succour. George,
indeed, would gladly have spared Cadurcis any knowledge of the storm
that was raging against him, and which he flattered himself would blow
over before Cadurcis was again abroad; but he was so much with
his cousin, and Cadurcis was so extremely acute and naturally so
suspicious, that this was impossible. Moreover, his absolute desertion
by his friends, and the invectives