eir
misadventure as they best could. But consolation was hard to come by in
the circumstances. The French artist had to lament the dispersion of
his spices, and the destruction of his magazine of sauces--an enchanter
despoiled of his magic wand and talisman, could scarce have been in
more desperate extremity. Chiffinch had to mourn the downfall of his
intrigue, and its premature discovery. "To this fellow, at least,"
he thought, "I can have bragged none--here my evil genius alone has
betrayed me. With this infernal discovery, which may cost me so dear
on all hands, champagne had nought to do. If there be a flask left
unbroken, I will drink it after dinner, and try if it may not even yet
suggest some scheme of redemption and of revenge."

With this manly resolution, he prosecuted his journey to London.

CHAPTER XXVIII

A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions--always in the wrong--
Was everything by starts, but nothing long;
Who, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then, all for women, painting, fiddling, drinking;
Besides a thousand freaks that died in thinking.
--DRYDEN.

We must now transport the reader to the magnificent hotel in ----Street,
inhabited at this time by the celebrated George Villiers, Duke of
Buckingham, whom Dryden has doomed to a painful immortality by the
few lines which we have prefixed to this chapter. Amid the gay and
licentious of the laughing Court of Charles, the Duke was the most
licentious and most gay; yet, while expending a princely fortune, a
strong constitution, and excellent talents, in pursuit of frivolous
pleasures, he nevertheless nourished deeper and more extensive designs;
in which he only failed from want of that fixed purpose and regulated
perseverance essential to all important enterprises, but particularly in
politics.

It was long past noon; and the usual hour of the Duke's levee--if
anything could be termed usual where all was irregular--had been long
past. His hall was filled with lackeys and footmen, in the most splendid
liveries; the interior apartments, with the gentlemen and pages of
his household, arrayed as persons of the first quality, and, in that
respect, rather exceeding than falling short of the Duke in personal
splendour