Chapter 9

by William Makepeace Thackeray

　　I APPEAR IN A MANNER BECOMING MY NAME AND LINEAGE.Fortune smiling at parting upon Monsieur de Balibari, enabled him towin a handsome sum with his faro-bank.At ten o'clock the next morning, the carriage of the Chevalier deBalibari drew up as usual at the door of his hotel; and theChevalier, who was at his window, seeing the chariot arrive, camedown the stairs in his usual stately manner.'Where is my rascal Ambrose?' said he, looking around and notfinding his servant to open the door.'I will let down the steps for your honour,' said a gendarme, whowas standing by the carriage; and no sooner had the Chevalierentered, than the officer jumped in after him, another mounted thebox by the coachman, and the latter began to drive.'Good gracious!' said the Chevalier, 'what is this?''You are going to drive to the frontier,' said the gendarme,touching his hat.'It is shameful--infamous! I insist upon being put down at theAustrian Ambassador's house!''I have orders to gag your honour if you cry out,' said thegendarme.'All Europe shall hear of this!' said the Chevalier, in a fury.'As you please,' answered the officer, and then both relapsed intosilence.The silence was not broken between Berlin and Potsdam, through whichplace the Chevalier passed as His Majesty was reviewing his guardsthere, and the regiments of Bulow, Zitwitz, and Henkel deDonnersmark. As the Chevalier passed His Majesty, the King raisedhis hat and said, 'Qu'il ne descende pas: je lui souhaite un bonvoyage.' The Chevalier de Balibari acknowledged this courtesy by aprofound bow.They had not got far beyond Potsdam, when boom! the alarm cannonbegan to roar.'It is a deserter,' said the officer.'Is it possible?' said the Chevalier, and sank back into hiscarriage again.Hearing the sound of the guns, the common people came out along theroad with fowling-pieces and pitchforks, in hopes to catch thetruant. The gendarmes seemed very anxious to be on the look-out forhim too. The price of a deserter was fifty crowns to those whobrought him in.'Confess, sir,' said the Chevalier to the police officer in thecarriage with him, 'that you long to be rid of me, from whom you canget nothing, and to be on the look-out for the deserter who maybring you in fifty crowns? Why not tell the postilion to push on?You may land me at the frontier and get back to your hunt all thesooner.' The officer told the postillion to get on; but the wayseemed intolerably long to the Chevalier. Once or twice he thoughthe heard the noise of horse galloping behind: his own horses did notseem to go two miles an hour; but they did go. The black and whitebarriers came in view at last, hard by Bruck, and opposite them thegreen and yellow of Saxony. The Saxon custom-house officers cameout.'I have no luggage,' said the Chevalier.'The gentleman has nothing contraband,' said the Prussian officers,grinning, and took their leave of their prisoner with much respect.The Chevalier de Balibari gave them a Frederic apiece.'Gentlemen,' said he, 'I wish you a good day. Will you please to goto the house whence we set out this morning, and tell my man thereto send on my baggage to the "Three Kings" at Dresden?'Then ordering fresh horses, the Chevalier set off on his journey forthat capital. I need not tell you that I was the Chevalier.'From the Chevalier de Balibari to Redmond Barry, Esquire,Gentilhomme Anglais, a l'Hotel des 3 Couronnes, a Dresde en Saxe.'Nephew Redmond,--This comes to you by a sure hand, no other thanMr. Lumpit of the English Mission, who is acquainted, as all Berlinwill be directly, with our wonderful story. They only know half asyet; they only know that a deserter went off in my clothes, and allare in admiration of your cleverness and valour.'I confess that for two hours after your departure I lay in bed inno small trepidation, thinking whether His Majesty might have afancy to send me to Spandau, for the freak of which we had both beenguilty. But in that case I had taken my precautions: I had written astatement of the case to my chief, the Austrian Minister, with thefull and true story how you had been set to spy upon me, how youturned out to be my very near relative, how you had been kidnappedyourself into the service, and how we both had determined to effectyour escape. The laugh would have been so much against the King,that he never would have dared to lay a finger upon me. What wouldMonsieur de Voltaire have said to such an act of tyranny? But itwas a lucky day, and everything has turned out to my wish. As I layin my bed two and a half hours after your departure, in comes yourex-Captain Potzdorff. "Redmont!" says he, in his imperious High-Dutch way, "are you there?" No answer. "The rogue is gone out," saidhe; and straightway makes for my red box where I keep my love-letters, my glass eye which I used to wear, my favourite lucky dicewith which I threw the thirteen mains at Prague; my two sets ofParis teeth, and my other private matters that you know of.'He first tried a bunch of keys, but none of them would fit thelittle English lock. Then my gentleman takes out of his pocket achisel and hammer, and falls to work like a professional burglar,actually bursting open my little box!'Now was my time to act. I advance towards him armed with an immensewater-jug. I come noiselessly up to him just as he had broken thebox, and with all my might I deal him such a blow over the head assmashes the water-jug to atoms, and sends my captain with a snortlifeless to the ground. I thought I had killed him.'Then I ring all the bells in the house; and shout and swear andscream, "Thieveslandlordfire!" until thewhole household come tumbling up the stairs. "Where is my servant?"roar I. "Who dares to rob me in open day? Look at the villain whom Ifind in the act of breaking my chest open! Send for the police, sendfor his Excellency the Austrian Minister! all Europe shall know ofthis insult!"'"Dear Heaven!" says the landlord, "we saw you go away three hoursago!"'"Me!" says I; "why, man, I have been in bed all the morning. I amill--I have taken physic--I have not left the house this morning!Where is that scoundrel Ambrose? But, stop! where are my clothes andwig?" for I was standing before them in my chamber-gown andstockings, with my nightcap on.'"I have it--I have it!" says a little chambermaid: "Ambrose is offin your honour's dress."'"And my money--my money!" says I; "where is my purse with forty-eight Frederics in it? But we have one of the villains left.Officers, seize him!"'"It's the young Herr von Potzdorff!" says the landlord, more andmore astonished.'"What! a gentleman breaking open my trunk with hammer and chisel--impossible!"'Herr von Potzdorff was returning to life by this time, with aswelling on his skull as big as a saucepan; and the officers carriedhim off, and the judge who was sent for dressed a proces verbal ofthe matter, and I demanded a copy of it, which I sent forthwith tomy ambassador.'I was kept a prisoner to my room the next day, and a judge, ageneral, and a host of lawyers, officers, and officials, were setupon me to bully, perplex, threaten, and cajole me. I said it wastrue you had told me that you had been kidnapped into the service,that I thought you were released from it, and that I had you withthe best recommendations. I appealed to my Minister, who was boundto come to my aid; and, to make a long story short, poor Potzdorffis now on his way to Spandau; and his uncle, the elder Potzdorff,has brought me five hundred louis, with a humble request that Iwould leave Berlin forthwith, and hush up this painful matter.'I shall be with you at the "Three Crowns" the day after you receivethis. Ask Mr. Lumpit to dinner. Do not spare your money--you are myson. Everybody in Dresden knows your loving uncle,'THE CHEVALIER DE BALIBARI.'And by these wonderful circumstances I was once more free again: andI kept my resolution then made, never to fall more into the hands ofany recruiter, and henceforth and for ever to be a gentleman.With this sum of money, and a good run of luck which ensuedpresently, we were enabled to make no ungenteel figure. My unclespeedily joined me at the inn at Dresden, where, under pretence ofillness, I had kept quiet until his arrival; and, as the Chevalierde Balibari was in particular good odour at the Court of Dresden(having been an intimate acquaintance of the late monarch, theElector, King of Poland, the most dissolute and agreeable ofEuropean princes), I was speedily in the very best society of theSaxon capital: where I may say that my own person and manners, andthe singularity of the adventures in which I had been a hero, mademe especially welcome. There was not a party of the nobility towhich the two gentlemen of Balibari were not invited. I had thehonour of kissing hands and being graciously received at Court bythe Elector, and I wrote home to my mother such a flamingdescription of my prosperity, that the good soul very nearly forgother celestial welfare and her confessor, the Reverend Joshua Jowls,in order to come after me to Germany; but travelling was verydifficult in those days, and so we were spared the arrival of thegood lady.I think the soul of Harry Barry, my father, who was always sogenteel in his turn of mind, must have rejoiced to see the positionwhich I now occupied; all the women anxious to receive me, all themen in a fury; hobnobbing with dukes and counts at supper, dancingminuets with high-well-born baronesses (as they absurdly callthemselves in Germany), with lovely excellencies, nay, withhighnesses and transparencies themselves: who could compete with thegallant young Irish noble? who would suppose that seven weeks beforeI had been a common--bah! I am ashamed to think of it! One of thepleasantest moments of my life was at a grand gala at the ElectoralPalace, where I had the honour of walking a polonaise with no otherthan the Margravine of Bayreuth, old Fritz's own sister: oldFritz's, whose hateful blue-baize livery I had worn, whose belts Ihad pipeclayed, and whose abominable rations of small beer andsauerkraut I had swallowed for five years.Having won an English chariot from an Italian gentleman at play, myuncle had our arms painted on the panels in a more splendid way thanever, surmounted (as we were descended from the ancient kings) withan Irish crown of the most splendid size and gilding. I had thiscrown in lieu of a coronet engraved on a large amethyst signet-ringworn on my forefinger; and I don't mind confessing that I used tosay the jewel had been in my family for several thousand years,having originally belonged to my direct ancestor, his late MajestyKing Brian Boru, or Barry. I warrant the legends of the Heralds'College are not more authentic than mine was.At first the Minister and the gentlemen at the English hotel used tobe rather shy of us two Irish noblemen, and questioned ourpretensions to rank. The Minister was a lord's son, it is true, buthe was likewise a grocer's grandson; and so I told him at CountLobkowitz's masquerade. My uncle, like a noble gentleman as he was,knew the pedigree of every considerable family in Europe. He said itwas the only knowledge befitting a gentleman; and when we were notat cards, we would pass hours over Gwillim or D'Hozier, reading thegenealogies, learning the blazons, and making ourselves acquaintedwith the relationships of our class. Alas! the noble science isgoing into disrepute now: so are cards, without which studies andpastimes I can hardly conceive how a man of honour can exist.My first affair of honour with a man of undoubted fashion was on thescore of my nobility, with young Sir Rumford Bumford of the Englishembassy; my uncle at the same time sending a cartel to the Minister,who declined to come. I shot Sir Rumford in the leg, amidst thetears of joy of my uncle, who accompanied me to the ground; and Ipromise you that none of the young gentlemen questioned theauthenticity of my pedigree, or laughed at my Irish crown again.What a delightful life did we now lead! I knew I was born agentleman, from the kindly way in which I took to the business: asbusiness it certainly is. For though it seemS all pleasure, yet Iassure any low-bred persons who may chance to read this, that we,their betters, have to work as well as they: though I did not riseuntil noon, yet had I not been up at play until long past midnight?Many a time have we come home to bed as the troops were marching outto early parade; and oh! it did my heart good to hear the buglesblowing the reveille before daybreak, or to see the regimentsmarching out to exercise, and think that I was no longer bound tothat disgusting discipline, but restored to my natural station.I came into it at once, and as if I had never done anything else allmy life. I had a gentleman to wait upon me, a French friseur todress my hair of a morning; I knew the taste of chocolate as byintuition almost, and could distinguish between the right Spanishand the French before I had been a week in my new position; I hadrings on all my fingers, watches in both my fobs, canes, trinkets,and snuffboxes of all sorts, and each outvying the other inelegance. I had the finest natural taste for lace and china of anyman I ever knew; I could judge a horse as well as any Jew dealer inGermany; in shooting and athletic exercises I was unrivalled; Icould not spell, but I could speak German and French cleverly. I hadat the least twelve suits of clothes; three richly embroidered withgold, two laced with silver, a garnet-coloured velvet pelisse linedwith sable; one of French grey, silver-laced, and lined withchinchilla. I had damask morning robes. I took lessons on theguitar, and sang French catches exquisitely. Where, in fact, wasthere a more accomplished gentleman than Redmond de Balibari?All the luxuries becoming my station could not, of course, bepurchased without credit and money: to procure which, as ourpatrimony had been wasted by our ancestors, and we were above thevulgarity and slow returns and doubtful chances of trade, my unclekept a faro-bank. We were in partnership with a Florentine, wellknown in all the Courts of Europe, the Count Alessandro Pippi, asskilful a player as ever was seen; but he turned out a sad knavelatterly, and I have discovered that his countship was a mereimposture. My uncle was maimed, as I have said; Pippi, like allimpostors, was a coward; it was my unrivalled skill with the sword,and readiness to use it, that maintained the reputation of the firm,so to speak, and silenced many a timid gambler who might havehesitated to pay his losings. We always played on parole withanybody: any person, that is, of honour and noble lineage. We neverpressed for our winnings or declined to receive promissory notes inlieu of gold. But woe to the man who did not pay when the notebecame due! Redmond de Balibari was sure to wait upon him with hisbill, and I promise you there were very few bad debts: on thecontrary, gentlemen were grateful to us for our forbearance, and ourcharacter for honour stood unimpeached. In later times, a vulgarnational prejudice has chosen to cast a slur upon the character ofmen of honour engaged in the profession of play; but I speak of thegood old days in Europe, before the cowardice of the Frencharistocracy (in the shameful Revolution, which served them right)brought discredit and ruin upon our order. They cry fie now upon menengaged in play; but I should like to know how much more honourabletheir modes of livelihood are than ours. The broker of the Exchangewho bulls and bears, and buys and sells, and dabbles with lyingloans, and trades on State secrets, what is he but a gamester? Themerchant who deals in teas and tallow, is he any better? His balesof dirty indigo are his dice, his cards come up every year insteadof every ten minutes, and the sea is his green table. You call theprofession of the law an honourable one, where a man will lie forany bidder; lie down poverty for the sake of a fee from wealth, liedown right because wrong is in his brief. You call a doctor anhonourable man, a swindling quack, who does not believe in thenostrums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea for whisperingin your ear that it is a fine morning; and yet, forsooth, a gallantman who sits him down before the baize and challenges all comers,his money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribedby your modern moral world. It is a conspiracy of the middle classesagainst gentlemen: it is only the shopkeeper cant which is to godown nowadays. I say that play was an institution of chivalry: ithas been wrecked, along with other privileges of men of birth. WhenSeingalt engaged a man for six-and-thirty hours without leaving thetable, do you think he showed no courage? How have we had the bestblood, and the brightest eyes, too, of Europe throbbing round thetable, as I and my uncle have held the cards and the bank againstsome terrible player, who was matching some thousands out of hismillions against our all which was there on the baize! when weengaged that daring Alexis Kossloffsky, and won seven thousand louisin a single coup, had we lost, we should have been beggars the nextday; when he lost, he was only a village and a few hundred serfs inpawn the worse. When, at Toeplitz, the Duke of Courland broughtfourteen lacqueys, each with four bags of florins, and challengedour bank to play against the sealed bags, what did we ask? 'Sir,'said we, 'we have but eighty thousand florins in bank, or twohundred thousand at three months. If your Highness's bags do notcontain more than eighty thousand, we will meet you.' And we did,and after eleven hours' play, in which our bank was at one timereduced to two hundred and three ducats, we won seventeen thousandflorins of him. Is this not something like boldness? does thisprofession not require skill, and perseverance, and bravery? Fourcrowned heads looked on at the game, and an Imperial princess, whenI turned up the ace of hearts and made Paroli, burst into tears. Noman on the European Continent held a higher position than RedmondBarry then; and when the Duke of Courland lost, he was pleased tosay that we had won nobly; and so we had, and spent nobly what wewon.At this period my uncle, who attended mass every day regularly,always put ten florins into the box. Wherever we went, the tavern-keepers made us more welcome than royal princes. We used to giveaway the broken meat from our suppers and dinners to scores ofbeggars who blessed us. Every man who held my horse or cleaned myboots got a ducat for his pains. I was, I may say, the author of ourcommon good fortune, by putting boldness into our play. Pippi was afaint-hearted fellow, who was always cowardly when he began to win.My uncle (I speak with great respect of him) was too much of adevotee, and too much of a martinet at play ever to win greatly. Hismoral courage was unquestionable, but his daring was not sufficient.Both of these my seniors very soon acknowledged me to be theirchief, and hence the style of splendour I have described.I have mentioned H.I.H. the Princess Frederica Amelia, who wasaffected by my success, and shall always think with gratitude of theprotection with which that exalted lady honoured me. She waspassionately fond of play, as indeed were the ladies of almost allthe Courts in Europe in those days, and hence would often arise nosmall trouble to us; for the truth must be told, that ladies love toplay, certainly, but not to pay. The point of honour is notunderstood by the charming sex; and it was with the greatestdifficulty, in our peregrinations to the various Courts of NorthernEurope, that we could keep them from the table, could get theirmoney if they lost, or, if they paid, prevent them from using themost furious and extraordinary means of revenge. In those great daysof our fortune, I calculate that we lost no less than fourteenthousand louis by such failures of payment. A princess of a ducalhouse gave us paste instead of diamonds, which she had solemnlypledged to us; another organised a robbery of the Crown jewels, andwould have charged the theft upon us, but for Pippi's caution, whohad kept back a note of hand 'her High Transparency' gave us, andsent it to his ambassador; by which precaution I do believe ournecks were saved. A third lady of high (but not princely) rank,after I had won a considerable sum in diamonds and pearls from her,sent her lover with a band of cut-throats to waylay me; and it wasonly by extraordinary courage, skill, and good luck, that I escapedfrom these villains, wounded myself, but leaving the chief aggressordead on the ground: my sword entered his eye and broke there, andthe villains who were with him fled, seeing their chief fall. Theymight have finished me else, for I had no weapon of defence.Thus it will be seen that our life, for all its splendour, was oneof extreme danger and difficulty, requiring high talents and couragefor success; and often, when we were in a full vein of success, wewere suddenly driven from our ground on account of some freak of areigning prince, some intrigue of a disappointed mistress, or somequarrel with the police minister. If the latter personage were notbribed or won over, nothing was more common than for us to receive asudden order of departure; and so, perforce, we lived a wanderingand desultory life.Though the gains of such a life are, as I have said, very great, yetthe expenses are enormous. Our appearance and retinue was toosplendid for the narrow mind of Pippi, who was always crying out atmy extravagance, though obliged to own that his own meanness andparsimony would never have achieved the great victories which mygenerosity had won. With all our success, our capital was not verygreat. That speech to the Duke of Courland, for instance, was a mereboast as far as the two hundred thousand florins at three monthswere concerned. We had no credit, and no money beyond that on ourtable, and should have been forced to fly if his Highness had wonand accepted our bills. Sometimes, too, we were hit very hard. Abank is a certainty, almost; but now and then a bad day will come;and men who have the courage of good fortune, at least, ought tomeet bad luck well: the former, believe me, is the harder task ofthe two.One of these evil chances befell us in the Duke of Baden'sterritory, at Mannheim. Pippi, who was always on the look-out forbusiness, offered to make a bank at the inn where we put up, andwhere the officers of the Duke's cuirassiers supped; and some smallplay accordingly took place, and some wretched crowns and louischanged hands: I trust, rather to the advantage of these poorgentlemen of the army, who are surely the poorest of all devilsunder the sun.But, as ill luck would have it, a couple of young students from theneighbouring University of Heidelberg, who had come to Mannheim fortheir quarter's revenue, and so had some hundred of dollars betweenthem, were introduced to the table, and, having never played before,began to win (as is always the case). As ill luck would have it,too, they were tipsy, and against tipsiness I have often found thebest calculations of play fail entirely. They played in the mostperfectly insane way, and yet won always. Every card they backedturned up in their favour. They had won a hundred louis from us inten minutes; and, seeing that Pippi was growing angry and the luckagainst us, I was for shutting up the bank for the night, saying theplay was only meant for a joke, and that now we had had enough.But Pippi, who had quarrelled with me that day, was determined toproceed, and the upshot was, that the students played and won more;then they lent money to the officers, who began to win, too; and inthis ignoble way, in a tavern room thick with tobacco-smoke, acrossa deal table besmeared with beer and liquor, and to a parcel ofhungry subalterns and a pair of beardless students, three of themost skilful and renowned players in Europe lost seventeen hundredlouis! I blush now when I think of it. It was like Charles XII orRichard Coeur de Lion falling before a petty fortress and an unknownhand (as my friend Mr. Johnson wrote), and was, in fact, a mostshameful defeat.Nor was this the only defeat. When our poor conquerors had gone off,bewildered with the treasure which fortune had flung in their way(one of these students was called the Baron de Clootz, perhaps hewho afterwards lost his head at Paris), Pippi resumed the quarrel ofthe morning, and some exceedingly high words passed between us.Among other things I recollect I knocked him down with a stool, andwas for flinging him out of the window; but my uncle, who was cool,and had been keeping Lent with his usual solemnity, interposedbetween us, and a reconciliation took place, Pippi apologising andconfessing he had been wrong.I ought to have doubted, however, the sincerity of the treacherousItalian; indeed, as I never before believed a word that he said inhis life, I know not why I was so foolish as to credit him now, andgo to bed, leaving the keys of our cash-box with him. It contained,after our loss to the cuirassiers, in bills and money, near uponL8000 sterling. Pippi insisted that our reconciliation should beratified over a bowl of hot wine, and I have no doubt put somesoporific drug into the liquor; for my uncle and I both slept tillvery late the next morning, and woke with violent headaches andfever: we did not quit our beds till noon. He had been gone twelvehours, leaving our treasury empty; and behind him a sort ofcalculation, by which he strove to make out that this was his shareof the profits, and that all the losses had been incurred withouthis consent.Thus, after eighteen months, we had to begin the world again. Butwas I cast down? No. Our wardrobes still were worth a very large sumof money; for gentlemen did not dress like parish-clerks in thosedays, and a person of fashion would often wear a suit of clothes anda set of ornaments that would be a shop-boy's fortune; so, withoutrepining for one single minute, or saying a single angry word (myuncle's temper in this respect was admirable), or allowing thesecret of our loss to be known to a mortal soul, we pawned three-fourths of our jewels and clothes to Moses Lowe the banker, and withthe produce of the sale, and our private pocket-money, amounting inall to something less than 800 louis, we took the field again.