obered by its hue,--made me appear considerably older
than I was. I kept my own counsel, and affected to be so: youth is a
great enemy to one's success; and more esteem is often bestowed upon a
wrinkled brow than a plodding brain.

All the private intelligence which during this space of time I had
received from England was far from voluminous. My mother still enjoyed
the quiet of her religious retreat. A fire, arising from the negligence
of a servant, had consumed nearly the whole of Devereux Court (the fine
old house! till _that_ went, I thought even England held one friend).
Upon this accident, Gerald had gone to London; and, though there was now
no doubt of his having been concerned in the Rebellion of 1715, he had
been favourably received at court, and was already renowned throughout
London for his pleasures, his excesses, and his munificent profusion.

Montreuil, whose lot seemed to be always to lose by intrigue what he
gained by the real solidity of his genius, had embarked very largely in
the rash but gigantic schemes of Gortz and Alberoni; schemes which, had
they succeeded, would not only have placed a new king upon the English
throne, but wrought an utter change over the whole face of Europe.
With Alberoni and with Gortz fell Montreuil. He was banished France and
Spain; the penalty of death awaited him in Britain; and he was supposed
to have thrown himself into some convent in Italy, where his name and
his character were unknown. In this brief intelligence was condensed
all my information of the actors in my first scenes of life. I return to
that scene on which I had now entered.

At the age of thirty-three I had acquired a reputation sufficient
to content my ambition; my fortune was larger than my wants; I was
a favourite in courts; I had been successful in camps; I had already
obtained all that would have rewarded the whole lives of many men
superior to myself in merit, more ardent than myself in desires. I was
still young; my appearance, though greatly altered, manhood had rather
improved than impaired. I had not forestalled my constitution by
excesses, nor worn dry the sources of pleasure by too large a demand
upon their capacities; why was it then, at that golden age, in the very
prime and glory of manhood, in the very zenith and summer of success,
that a deep, dark, pervading melancholy fell upon me? a melancholy so
gloomy that it seemed to me as a thick and impenetrable curtain drawn
gradually between