-and he bade
the butler pour wine into every one's glass--yet a toast--and he carried
it to the health of our dear friends, of Clive and his father,--the
good, the brave Colonel! "We who are happy," says he, "shall we not
think of those who are good? We who love each other, shall we not
remember those whom we all love?" He spoke with very great tenderness
and feeling. "Ma bonne mere, thou too shalt drink this toast!" he
said, taking his mother's hand, and kissing it. She returned his caress
gently, and tasted the wine with her pale lips. Ethel's head bent in
silence over her glass; and, as for Laura, need I say what happened to
her! When the ladies went away my heart was opened to my friend Florac,
and I told him where and how I had left my dear Clive's father.

The Frenchman's emotion on hearing this tale was such that I have loved
him ever since. Clive in want! Why had he not sent to his friend?
Grands Dieux! Clive who had helped him in his greatest distress! Clive's
father, ce preux chevalier, ce parfait gentilhomme! In a hundred rapid
exclamations Florac exhibited his sympathy, asking of Fate, why such men
as he and I were sitting surrounded by splendours--before golden vases
crowned with flowers--with valets to kiss our feet--(those were merely
figures of speech in which Paul expressed his prosperity)--whilst our
friend the Colonel, so much better than we, spent his last days in
poverty, and alone.

I liked Florac none the less, I own, because that one of the conditions
of the Colonel's present life, which appeared the hardest to most
people, affected Florac but little. To be a Pensioner of an Ancient
Institution? Why not? Might not a man retire without shame to the
Invalides at the close of his campaigns, and, had not Fortune conquered
our old friend, and age and disaster overcome him? It never once entered
Thomas Newcome's head; nor Clive's, nor Florac's, nor his mother's,
that the Colonel demeaned himself at all by accepting that bounty; and I
recollect Warrington sharing our sentiment and trowling out those noble
lines of the old poet:--

"His golden locks time hath to silver turned;
O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned,
But spurned in vain; youth waneth by encreasing.
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen.
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees,