Chapter I: Farewell to England

ON February 10, 1810, the frigate _Jason_, commander James King,--left Portsmouth, bound for Gibraltar. In the stern of the vessel, a group of four persons watched the coast, which was enveloped in a clinging mist which the meagre English sun could not contrive to absorb, gradually recede into the distance. Three men stood a little apart from a woman whose gigantic stature must not have passed unnoticed, even on British soil.

She was six feet in height and was developed in proportion. Strangers who met her for the first time allowed their astonished and mocking eyes to wander at random and to lose their way over the vast surface which she offered to the admirers of bulk, but when they had succeeded in reaching the face, pale and passionate flower borne by a robust stalk, they were interested, captivated, subjugated, dazzled! What wonderful surprise, after the difficult and monotonous ascent of a lofty peak, to discover boundless fields of fresh snow, sparkling with light!...

More strange than beautiful, this woman attracted attention, and those who had gazed upon her features never forgot them. Can one say that the sun is beautiful when its fires blind? Thus everything about her glittered; her skin dazzling as marble, of which it possessed the pure grain and the cold smoothness, her eyes of a pale and frosty grey which were illuminated by a terrifying and wild glitter when passion roused her and which was heightened by a bluish ring.... Everything about her was striking: her lips, of a dark red, firm and strong in shape, her dazzling teeth, her curved nose, her obstinate chin. A northern light seemed to play on this lofty and superb forehead, on this countenance of a perfect oval, and isolated her in crowning her as a queen ... or as a madwoman....

What age could she be? Some thirty years hardly. Perhaps more, for the corners of the mouth, a trifle fallen in, had a wrinkle of bitterness and disenchantment which accused her of being older.

At this moment she was gazing at the north with a singular intensity of expression, and when England had disappeared in its wrappings of mist, smiling and satisfied she triumphantly wagged her foot; a foot so long and so arched that a kitten might easily run about on it.... She crossed the bridge and went to lean her elbow on the bow of the ship. Had she a presentiment that her departure would be definitive, eternal, and that she would never more behold the green forest trees of Chevening or the fine equipages of Bond Street?

Lady Hester Stanhope was born on March 12, 1776, of the marriage of Hester, sister of William Pitt, with Charles, Lord Mahon, afterwards third Earl Stanhope, the frenzied Republican. Her ancestors, both paternal and maternal, were not ordinary people. Her grandfather, Lord Chatham, had, by the side of his great intellectual faculties, the detestable mania of enveloping the most anodyne acts of life with an impenetrable mystery which kept all his entourage on the alert and in suspense. Had he not one day when he was unwell, refused to receive a man, the bearer of urgent news, who insisted on seeing him immediately? After long discussions, the messenger contrived to be introduced into the Minister's room; but the room was darkened and the Minister invisible behind a rampart of screens. New battle to succeed in catching sight of Lord Chatham. At last, when the man had by main force gained this honour, he drew from his pocket a parchment containing the title-deeds of two estates with a rent-roll of £14,000, bequeathed by Sir Edward Pynsent as a proof of his admiration. The property had nearly escaped him. Lady Hester Stanhope, if she did not inherit Burton Pynsent, inherited, at any rate, all these eccentricities of character.

As for her other grandfather, he was that second Earl Stanhope who had forbidden his son to powder his hair on the occasion of his presentation at Court, "because," he pretended, "wheat was too dear." So that Lord Mahon went quite simply into the presence of the King with his natural head of hair, that is to say, black as coal and lightened by a white plume, which caused the spiteful tongue of Horace Walpole to remark that "he had been tarred and feathered."

This misadventure did not prevent the young man from marrying, the same year, Lady Hester Pitt. The great Chatham entertained the highest opinion of his son-in-law.

"The exterior is pleasing," wrote he to Mr. James Grenville, "but it is in looking within that one finds invaluable treasures, a head to imagine, a heart to conceive and an arm to execute all that he can have there which is good, amiable and of good report."

By this marriage, he had three daughters: the extraordinary Hester, Griselda and Lucy Rachel. Left a widower five years later, he contracted a second marriage, with Louisa Grenville, by whom he had three children: Philip Henry; Charles, who was killed at Coruña; and James Hamilton, inspired no doubt by the spirit of equity, for he was a thorough Republican.

Grave political differences which arose from 1784 between Stanhope and Pitt sensibly cooled their friendship. The French Revolution separated them entirely. Lord Stanhope threw himself with ardour into the Opposition, through conviction at first, and then because he hated the victorious party, merely because it was the victorious party. He loved to act with a little minority, and, this tendency continually increasing, earned him in the House of Lords the surname of "the Minority of One."

From his childhood at Geneva he had preserved the taste for the exact sciences, and he attached his name to several scientific discoveries, of which the most astonishing was that of steam navigation. His children alone did not interest him. Lady Hester Stanhope, who inherited from him her love of independence and the uncompromising nature of her ideas, played the very devil, terrorising her governesses. From 1800 to 1803 she lived with the old Lady Chatham at Burton Pynsent, of illustrious memory, and her skill in protecting her brothers and sisters from the paternal experiments having attracted the attention of her uncle, William Pitt, he asked her to come and keep house for him. She was then twenty-seven.

This singular young girl, down to the death of the "Great Commoner" in January, 1806, was truly his confidante, his secretary, his right arm. Remarkably intelligent, bold and original, she played the part of a second Prime Minister. Pensions, titles, favours passed through her hands. Thrown back brusquely into the shade, after her uncle's death, she was unable to endure the tameness of an ordinary life. After some years of solitude in Wales, disgusted with the world and politics, she resolved to leave this England which was too prompt to forget.

Of the three men who had embarked with her on the _Jason_, one was her brother, James Hamilton Stanhope, captain in the 1st Foot Guards, who was going to rejoin his regiment at Cadiz; another, a friend, Mr. Nassau Sutton; and the last, a young doctor, Charles Meryon, who, instead of growing musty in the lecture-rooms of Oxford, was departing joyously for milder climes.

Between two showers--they were numerous!--Lady Hester Stanhope came and sat down on the bridge. She would have wished to forget; she would have wished to break with the past, at once too beautiful and too sad; but recollections rolled in upon her, countless invading waves which moaned and beat against the shores of her soul.

What had she left behind her which was worthy of regrets? Two sisters with whom she had never been in the least intimate, an insignificant brother, an old maniac father, altogether mad and democrat besides, which is the worst of mental aberrations. Singular old fellow truly, who slept, _in winter_, with wide-open windows!

Lady Hester reviewed the sad days of her neglected childhood. Her stepmother was an insipid creature, without interest in anything, who divided her time--Oh! in a very equal way--between her toilet-table and her box at the Opera. And during this time, Lord Stanhope hurried from his iron hand-press to his factory for making artificial tiles to exclude the snow and the rain, sprang to his reckoning-machine, from there rushed to his dockyard, where a steamboat was always on the look-out and always refused to move, entered, on the way, the Old Jewry, where some members of the Revolution Society were ready to submit to a speech, and drew up in return a motion to be brought forward in the House of Lords in order to prevent England from interfering in the internal government of France!... One childish recollection haunted Lady Hester until she was tired.

The scene? A London street transformed into a sea of mud by an unusually mild winter. The personages? A little girl perched on enormous stilts and very much at her ease up there, to be sure! An old gentleman, tall and spare, leaning out of a window, using forcible language and gesticulating. The little girl went up to the first floor. Earl Stanhope was in a good temper that morning; after having dispersed his gold and silver plate and his tapestries, which exhaled a too aristocratic mustiness, he had just sold off his horses and carriages. With his bare feet thrust into slippers, and wearing under his dressing-gown his beloved silk breeches which never left him day or night, he was contentedly munching the piece of brown bread which with him took the place of breakfast.

"Well, little girl," was his greeting; "what is it that you want to say? On what devil had you climbed just now?"

"Oh, papa! Since you have no more horses, I wanted to practise walking in the mud with stilts. Mud, you know, is all the same to me; it is that poor Lady Stanhope who will find it trying; she is accustomed to her carriage, and her health is not first-rate."

"What is that you say, little girl? What would you say if I bought a carriage for Lady Stanhope?"

"Well, papa, I should say that it is very amiable of you."

"Well, well, we will see. But, by all the devils, no armorial bearings!"

Hester revived the scene with a distinctness which distance strengthened. She recalled even the carriage which Lady Stanhope had owed to the famous stilts; for her astonishing memory, like that of her grandfather, Lord Chatham, forgot neither things, nor animals nor people.

Memories rolled in upon her still. Willingly, Hester paused longer over those which had been proud or pleasant hours. She conjured up delightful evenings in London. Was it indeed she who was attending it seemed but yesterday the Duchess of Rutland's ball?

Before leaving Downing Street, she had gone to find her uncle, William Pitt, in his study. While he was finishing the signing of a paper, she arranged before a mirror the folds of her gown, of white satin draped in the antique fashion which blended with her snow-white shoulders. Suddenly she perceived that the Minister's attentive eye was following her movements.

"Really, Hester," said he, "you are going to make conquests this evening, but would it be too presumptuous to suggest to you that this fold ought to be caught up by a loop? There! like this. What do you think about it?"

And his taste was so delicate, that he had found instinctively what was required to complete the classic form of the drapery.

What a crowd at the duchess's! The heads all touched one another like the necks of bottles emerging from a basket.

And what long faces!

Ah! it is that English society was prodigiously bored. Boredom, that pastime of old peoples rotted by civilisation, reigned as master and triumphed hardly over the conventions. The French _émigrés_ had brought with them, in the perfume of their yellowed lace and in the flash of their last jewels, the precious remains of a frivolity and of a grace which were at the point of death. The spirit of France had been for the lymphatic coldness of the English what condiments are for boiled beef: a stimulant to the appetite. Scandal was on the watch and morals were dissolute. But the wits of these haughty ladies had been sharpened, and all their intrigues were carried on slyly, clandestinely. Against the rigid and narrow Puritanism, against the redoubtable spirit of cant, imagination and fancy struggled without hope of victory. The façade, that was what mattered! So much the worse if the interior of the building were used as a stable. Only, hypocrisy being like the veronal which prolongs the torpor of surfeited and jaded societies, England continued to govern royally. Extravagance and dandyism were required to cheer her up. And how welcome on the occasion of some dreary social function was the arrival of a Hester Stanhope or of a George Brummel!

Lady Hester recalled her entry into the ball-room with Lord Camelford, her beloved cousin--a true Pitt, that man! And what an entry. Both were of extraordinary stature; the women had not enough smiles for him, the men not enough eyes for her. A long flattering murmur accompanied them.

"Have you seen Lord Camelford?" twittered the ladies. "Well, it appears that he blew out the brains of his lieutenant one day that a mutiny threatened to break out aboard his ship, and that quite coolly, just as I am speaking to you."

"Oh! my dear, you make me shiver."

"Yes, my dear, he frequents the taverns in the City, disguised as a sailor, and when he meets some poor devil whose face he recollects, he makes him tell him his history, thrusts a hundred pounds into his hand and threatens to thrash him if he presumes to ask him his name!"

"Have you seen Lady Hester Stanhope? She caused a scandal at the last Court ball. No, really! You have not heard people talking about it? It is shocking, my dear! Would you believe that Lord Abercorn, having vainly solicited from Pitt the Order of the Garter, turned towards Addington (the surgeon's son; yes, exactly) to obtain it? Lady Hester, having learned of the matter, flew into a furious rage. Talking with the Duke of Cumberland--it is from the duke himself that I have the story, she said:

"'After the innumerable favours which Lord Abercorn has received from Mr. Pitt, to go over to Mr. Addington! Ah! I will make him pay dearly for his defection.'

"'Here is your opportunity, then,' exclaimed the duke, 'he has just come in. Go for him, little bulldog!'

"Forthwith Lady Hester pounced upon Addington, and, fixing her eyes on his Garter, said:

"'What have you there, my lord?' (You will recollect that Lord Abercorn has had both his legs broken.) 'What have you there?' A bandage? Mr. Addington has done his work well, and I hope that in future you will be able to walk more easily."

"Oh! it is insufferable!"

"Oh! my dear, here is something much better! The other day, Lord Mulgrave, while breakfasting with Mr. Pitt, found beside his plate a broken spoon.

"'How can Mr. Pitt keep such spoons?' he had the bad taste to say to Lady Hester.

"'Have you not yet discovered,' she replied, 'that Mr. Pitt often uses slight and weak instruments to effect his ends?'"

"What a pest she must be, dear creature! Lord Mulgrave! A wonderful statesman!"

And even those who detested her were the first to bow and scrape and join the crowd of admirers who surged in her wake.

"Lady Hester! I distinguished the pearls of your necklace more than five yards away!" "Lady Hester! you are astonishing this evening!" And suchlike banalities. And what heat! All the rouge and all the powder were melting. Lady Hester endeavoured in vain to reach a balcony. Cries, exclamations, confusion. The Duke of Cumberland's voice rose above the orchestra.

"Where is Lady Hester? where is my little aide-de-camp? Let her come and help me to get out of this inferno; I see nothing of her, and I cannot get out alone. Ah! where has she gone? Where has she gone?"

The Duke of Buckingham hurried away to fetch him a water-ice to save him the trouble of moving.

Who are these crossing the gallery of mirrors? Oh! they could be none but Lady Charlotte Bury and her brother, no one walked as they did; it was enchanting to watch them. What a beautiful woman, truly! What arms! What a hand! One evening when she was entering her box at the Opera, had not the entire house turned to admire her?

The Grassini was beginning to sing in a relative silence. The previous week, the Duchess of Devonshire had had Mrs. Billington, soprano against contralto; the worldly rivalries were continued in music....

In the great drawing-room, skilfully illuminated, for the Duchess of Rutland was too much of a Beaufort by race to leave in the shadow the pretty curve of her profile, the regular beauty of her features, the softness of her long eyelashes, there was a basket of living flowers. The Marchioness of Salisbury, who possessed the piquant charm which belongs to Frenchwomen, and who was slipping on her gloves with supple gestures, quite natural to her, in the prettiest manner imaginable, the Countess of Mansfield, Lady Stafford, the Countess of Glandore, so aristocratic in her demeanour, Lady Sage and Sele, the Countess of Derby, painted by Lawrence when she was still the actress Elisa Farren, and that charming Lady Duncombe, that romantic blonde who had inspired John Hoppner's masterpiece, and the Viscountess Andover, and the Viscountess of St. Asaph and so many others, with their pretty airs or their beautiful faces, their loose tresses, their tall statures, their bosoms rising and falling and their gowns of Indian muslin which revealed the outline of their bodies at the slightest movement--so many others who had posed carelessly, and as if to amuse themselves, before Lawrence, painter of adored women, before Romney or before the miniaturist Cosway.

Earl Grosvenor was talking in the embrasure of a door with the beautiful Lady Stafford. Lord Rivers, the Duke of Dorset, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Mulgrave fluttered about the Duchess of Devonshire. Perhaps they were making her guess at the last riddle of Fox, and the most true of English riddles: "My first denotes affliction which my second is destined to experience; my whole is the best antidote to soothe and cure this grief!" Perhaps also they were murmuring to her the verses which Southey had written in response to her praising William Tell:

Oh! lady nursed in pomp and pleasure
Where learnt thou that heroic measure?

Despite the advancing years, Georgina Spencer had remained "the irresistible Queen of the Mode," the beautiful lady, the exquisite _grande dame_, artistic, refined, adventurous, who had served as model to the two great English painters of the eighteenth century. With her nose _à la Roxelane_, her bewitching eyes, her wealth of auburn hair, with that dazzling carnation of the races of the North, that divine mouth which had snatched from Gainsborough a confession of powerlessness: "Your Grace is too difficult for me!" and which had made him throw his brush filled with colours on the damp canvas, she possessed still a unique grace, a reputation for cajolery which exasperated Lady Hester Stanhope. She considered that, when she was not smiling, her expression was satanic, and treated her affability as affectation. She knew so well how to cast her nets over the young men whom she needed for her little receptions! Her sister, Lady Bessborough, was ten times more intelligent. But fame inclines always towards splendid horses, fine carriages, great personages, rumour and sensation.

Lady Liverpool arrived naturally late, for Lord Liverpool was finishing his toilette as he came in. She entered the drawing-room with an inimitable ease of manner, cleaving her way like a beautiful swan through the crowd of guests, smiling to the right, inclining her head to the left, speaking to this one, inquiring after the health of that, saying an amiable word to all. But she was a Hervey, and all the world knew that God had created men, women and Herveys.

The Prince of Wales, who was still, despite his forty years and more, one of the handsomest men in the three kingdoms, with the soul the most ugly and the most vile, had condescended to come and relate to everyone who was willing to listen to him that the King was madder than ever. But Brummel had not yet put in an appearance.

It was whispered that the Prince, to the great despair of the Queen, had had himself painted full length and in uniform by Madam Vigée-Lebrun, while she was staying in London. Well-informed people added that he intended to give this portrait to Mrs. Fitz-Herbert, his former mistress, as a belated testimony of gratitude for all the errors which she had prevented him from committing. "Do not send this letter to such and such a person; she is careless and will leave it about." "You have been drinking all night; hold your tongue!" In this fashion had she been accustomed to address him.

This young widow, very pushful, whose profile and figure recalled those of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, would have been very willing to marry a prince just as Anne Lutterel had married the Duke of Cumberland. But then the Royal Marriage Act, and the religious ceremony of December 21, 1785, had never been recognised.

William Pitt, thin, lank, haughty and awkward-looking, with his head held high and thrown back, was looking fixedly at the ceiling, as though seeking his ideas in the air. One could not depend on that, however, for he took note of everything which happened, and discovered here a shoulder too high, there an imperfect figure under the deceitful drapery, there again a thick ankle.

"Lady Hester, do you not see Lord C ...? He is bowing to you."

"I see down there a great pigeon-chested chameleon. Is that Lord C ...?"

Camelford, who had heard the answer, made vain efforts to preserve his gravity. The unfortunate man had been driven on to the corner of a sofa by a countess, a little _passée_, who, presently, when he will have fled, tired out, will sing his praises, will shout them rather: "Such delightful manners! Wonderful conversational powers! Charming! Irresistible! Fascinating!"

The heat, continually increasing, was altering, turning pale and distorting the faces of all the company, just as if they were moulded in soft and tepid wax. In proportion as the evening advanced, the favourable impressions which the women had created were discounted. Then Brummel made his appearance. He wore a coat of some softened colour, the material of which had been rasped all over with a piece of sharpened glass, an aerial coat, a coat of lacework.... The gloves he wore were transparent, which moulded his fingers and showed the contour of the nails as well as the flesh--gloves which had necessitated the coalition of four artists, three for the hand, one for the thumb....

And all that without self-consciousness, with a cold languidness, an ease of bearing, a simplicity! But excess of refinement!--does it not often rejoin the natural?

With him there entered an invigorating breath, an unexpected attraction, a new pungency which acted like a tonic upon pleasures which had grown anæmic. The orchestra became more animated, the women more desirable, the men, already three-parts intoxicated by the alcohol they had consumed, less wearisome.

Meanwhile, without hurrying himself, Brummel threaded his way through the rooms. Amongst all those proud ladies, how many had contrived their toilettes, chosen with more care the diamonds which adorned their coiffures and the flowers of their corsages, in the hope of attracting his attention? A duchess told her daughter quite loudly to be careful of her manners, of her gestures and of her answers, if by chance Brummel condescended to speak to her.

And, nevertheless, he was not handsome, in the strict sense of the word. His hair was inclined to be red, and his profile, though of Grecian type, had been spoiled by a fall from his horse, when he was still serving in the 10th Hussars, under the orders of the Prince of Wales. But the expression of his face was more to be admired than his features, the skill of his attitudes more perfect than his body. And, above all, he was irony and impertinence personified. And women, who are sometimes insensible to flattery and endearments, are never so to disdain and wounds inflicted on their vanity. And those who were the most infatuated with "primosity," that exquisite word created by the Pitts to characterise the solemn, stiff, bashful spirit of Cant, and which might have deserved the definition which Pope gave of prudery:

What is prudery? 'Tis a beldam
Seen with wit and beauty seldom

did not pardon him for not having asked them for what they would have refused him. More of a dandy than the Prince of Wales, he had not attached himself to Mrs. Fitz-Herbert, Benina, as he had surnamed her one evening.

His eyes, unreadable and incredibly penetrating, roamed, slowly and without seeing anything, over the rooms in which the most beautiful women in London were gathered. With an icy indifference, his distant glances skimmed the faces, without recognising them, without settling anywhere.

"Where shall I find a woman who knows how to dance without breaking my back?" spoke the magnificent voice at last. "Ah! here is Catherine (the sister of the Duke of Rutland), and I think she will suit my purpose."

But, catching sight of Lady Hester, he gave the duke's sister the slip and came towards her. Raising the ear-rings which concealed the beautiful and graceful collar which encircled her neck, he exclaimed:

"For the love of God, let me see what is under there!"

Pitt's niece and the king of the dandies had a keen appreciation of each other's qualities. They were both of them without rivals in showing the grotesque sides hidden in all men, without rivals in stripping and publicly castigating the puppets who governed England, without rivals in compelling them to unmask themselves their dirty little tricks, their villainous hypocrisies, their bad faith, their monstrous absurdities, just as exhibitors of trained animals make their monkeys parade and dance.

Having passed judgment on the ball--Brummel's praise or blame was everything at that time--or by a silence more eloquent, he went to Watier's Club, followed by Lord Petersham, Lord Somerset, Charles Ker and Robert and Charles Manners, famous Macaronis gravitating around their star.

In the carriage which took them back to Downing Street, Pitt said to his niece:

"Really, Hester, Lord Hertford has paid you so many compliments this evening that you ought to be proud of them."

"Not at all," she answered. "Lord Hertford is deceived if he thinks that I am beautiful. Take each feature of my face separately and put them on the table; not one of them will bear examination. Put them together and illuminated, they are not bad. It is a homogeneous ugliness, nothing more."

A slight roll was disturbing the _Jason_. Lady Hester, lost in her thoughts, remained leaning against the netting. She recalled to mind some of those mordant sallies which had crucified her victims. Pitt had decided to create an Order of Merit; England was at this time in the thick of the war against France. Lord Liverpool was entrusted with the task of deciding on the colours of the decoration; and one evening he entered the Prime Minister's drawing-room, quite proud of himself and brandishing a tricolour ribbon.

"See," cried he, "how I have succeeded in combining colours which will flatter the natural pride: red is the British flag; blue is the symbol of liberty; white, the symbol of loyalty."

All present expressed their admiration.

"Perfect! Excellent! The King will be pleased!" they exclaimed.

"I am sure of it," remarked Lady Hester, "but it seems to me that I have seen that combination of colours somewhere!"

"Where was it?" inquired Liverpool, taken aback.

"Well, on the cockades of the French soldiers!"

"What ought to be done, Lady Hester? I have ordered five hundred yards of it. What use can I make of it?"

"To keep up your breeches, my lord, when you put papers there which you never find and which you look for at the bottom of one pocket, then at the bottom of another, like an eel at the bottom of a fish-pond. I am always afraid that some misfortune will happen to your breeches!"

And when Addington (the duchess's son still) had had the fancy to have himself created Lord Raleigh, she had conceived a pretty caricature. Her uncle, Pitt, played the part of Queen Elizabeth, dancing a minuet with his nose in the air; Addington, as Sir Walter Raleigh, made his obeisance; and the King wore the costume of a Court jester! Pitt, after indulging in roars of laughter over this description, had despatched a dozen emissaries to all parts of London to secure, no matter at what cost, the famous caricature, which only existed in Lady Hester's imagination. And there was no Lord Raleigh!

And the delicious scenes in which she caused the entire Court to pass in review, those scenes of which she was at once author, actor and costumer. With her the talent of imitation amounted wellnigh to genius. She mimicked the women who were the leaders of the fashionable world, or who had been its leaders, such as the Duchess of Devonshire: "Fu! Fu! Fuh! what shall I do, my dear. Oh, dear! how frightened I am!" She mimicked the duchess's visit to the Foreign Office to demand back a note which she had sent to someone there. Perceiving a shabby little clerk, she said to him:

"Would you be so good, sir, as to have the kindness to give me back that note? I am sure that you are such a perfect gentleman!..."

Then, turning towards the person who had accompanied her, the duchess exclaimed:

"What fine eyes! Don't you think so? He is a handsome man, is he not?" Just as if the staff of the Foreign Office did not understand French!

Lady Hester made game also of the sentimental couples dear to Kotzebue. With her hand on her heart, rolling her blue eyes, she aped the amorous transports of the newly married, representing in a second tableau, not less successful, the mistresses of the one and the lovers of the other.

And the pleasant evenings when she was alone with William Pitt. The logs blazed joyously. The lamps were low. What wonderful hours, for ever fled, she had passed thus during nearly three years!...

She heard William Pitt's clear voice. He was complaining of Canning, so elusive, so unstable, so false. Lady Hester protested mildly.

"Perhaps he is thus merely in appearance, uncle," said she, "and only sacrifices his opinions ostensibly in order to strengthen your reputation."

"I have lived for twenty-five years, my child, in the midst of men of every kind, and I have found only one human being capable of such a sacrifice."

"Who can that be? Is it the Duke of Richmond? Is it such or such a person?"

"No, it is you!" ...

Hester plunged further into her reveries. Dear Uncle William! How he loved her! It seemed but yesterday evening that he said to her: "Little one, I have many good diplomatists who understand nothing of military operations, and I have many good officers who understand not a jot about diplomatic negotiations. If you were a man, Hester, I would send you on the Continent with sixty thousand men and I would give you carte blanche. And I am sure that all my plans would be executed and that all the soldiers would have their shoes blacked."

Lady Hester recalled the promenades on the old feudal terrace of Windsor Castle. The King was there. All the princes and princesses revolved about him. All at once, the King stopped and, addressing himself to Pitt, said:

"Pitt, I have found a Minister to replace you."

Mr. Pitt immediately replied:

"I am happy that Your Majesty has found someone to relieve me of the burden of affairs; a little rest and fresh air will do me good."

The King continued as if he were concluding his sentence and had heard nothing:

"A Minister better than you."

"Your Majesty's choice cannot be other than excellent," replied Pitt, surprised.

The King resumed:

"I say, then, Pitt, that I have found a better Minister and, further, a very good general."

Those present began to smile and to scoff stealthily at the King's favourite. Pitt, notwithstanding his experience of the Court, felt ill at ease.

"Sir, will you condescend to tell me," said he, "who is this remarkable person to whom I render the homage due to his great talent and the choice of Your Majesty?"

The King would show him who it was: Lady Hester on her uncle's arm!

"Here is my new Minister," he exclaimed. "There is no person in the kingdom who is a better statesman than Lady Hester, and, I have great pleasure also in declaring, there is no woman who does more honour to her sex. You have no reason to be proud of yourself, Mr. Pitt, for there have been many Ministers before you and there will be many after you. But you have reason to be proud of her, for she unites all that is great in man and in woman."

Still standing on the bridge of the ship, insensible to the wind and the cold, Lady Hester recalled the painful circumstances which had accompanied the death of William Pitt. How he had lain emaciated and enfeebled in his room at Putney Hall, but always so full of hope, so confident in the approaching cure. And in less than a week afterwards he was resting on his death-bed. They enter, the latch is pushed, the door is open; the familiar footsteps no longer echo on the flagstones of the deserted corridors; the house is empty, the friends have fled, the servants are far away, the crowd of courtiers who used to besiege the porter's lodge dispersed, vanished, disappeared! It seemed to Lady Hester that she was again alone with her uncle for the last time. Then she had experienced the desertion of those who, only the day before, had been the most faithful. For twenty years he had spent himself body and soul for the good of the country; he had worn out his health; neglected his fortune, employed his credit on behalf of others; and he had received, as a last recompense, the approving sneers of those who listened to Canning criticising and disparaging his policy and exclaiming: "That is Pitt's glorious system!" And all the newspapers reflected: "That is Pitt's glorious system!" Hounds rushing on the quarry fearing lest they should lose a bite.

Rise at an early hour, receive fifty persons, eat in haste or do not eat at all, hurry to Windsor Castle, hurry to the House, tire our your lungs until three in the morning. Scarcely have you returned home than Mr. Adams arrives with a paper, then Mr. Long with another. Go to bed then--rat-tat-tat, a despatch from Lord Melville, "On His Majesty's service." Sleep--rat-tat-tat, thirty persons are waiting at the door.

Lady Hester recalled the little house in Montague Square, where she had gone to hide her grief. To have been everything and to have been only that! To make and unmake Ministers, to distribute pensions, to mimic the courtiers, to be insolent towards some, ironical towards others, to move surrounded by a troupe of envious persons wreathed in smiles, of ambitious persons bowing and scraping unceasingly, of fools gaping with admiration, to humble the vainglorious, to unmask the hypocrites. To be more than Minister.

She had known the pleasure of exercising authority without control, of commanding with the certainty of being obeyed; she had had the halo of fame without having its reverses, and then on a sudden she was no longer anything. Nothingness. Had she need of a shilling? Every purse was closed. Naturally, no more horses or carriages. Were she to ride in a hackney-coach. There was always some charitable soul to say: "Whom do you think I have met in a hackney-coach this afternoon?" ... Did she go on foot.... There were always well-intentioned persons to insinuate that Lady Hester Stanhope did not walk alone for nothing....

Did she meet a friend and walk a few steps with him, immediately all the neighbourhood was twittering:

"Have you seen Lady Hester Stanhope crossing Hanover Square with such and such a person? I wonder where they went." ... Confined in the pillory, she was obliged, without hope of revenge, to endure the insults of those at whom she had imprudently scoffed when intoxicated with power. And they were so much the more to be feared since they were enticed by the certainty of impunity. Men, like animals, soon become vicious when they know they are the stronger. She fled from London, and her little cottage at Builth, in Wales, was invaded in its turn by all that clique of people who make it their business to gloat over the misfortunes of others.

Charles, her favourite brother, and General Sir John Moore, the only man, except Camelford, who had ever touched her heart, were both dead. In the garden of her hopes there was nothing but tombs. What was there to stand in the way of her leaving England?

Long before the man in the crow's-nest had shouted: "Land to starboard!" Lady Hester's piercing eyes had made out a rocky point. It was Cap Finistère--France!

France! Her uncle Pitt had been there once, once only, between two Parliamentary sessions. It was in the autumn of 1783. After a stay at Rheims, at the time of the vintage, he had spent some days in Paris. The King was at Fontainebleau and all the fashionable world far from the capital, "with the exception of the English, who had the air of being in possession of the town." He visited the monuments, attended the Comédie-Française, followed a stag-hunt, appeared full of gaiety and animation, although he became a little bored when people talked to him of Parliamentary reform, and attracted the notice of all the distinguished people, beginning with Queen Marie Antoinette.

But that M. and Madame Necker should have offered him their daughter, with an income of £14,000, was laughable. How, imbued with the Swiss ideas on domestic happiness, could they have dared to throw their daughter Germaine at the head of a foreigner whom they had known scarcely a few days? In any case, Pitt's theatrical reply: "I have already wedded my country," is nonsense. He was much more direct and, above all, much more sarcastic, the dear uncle!

The night fell; a mauve twilight blended with the coasts of France. Lady Hester bent her head. She saw again a little girl seven or eight years old who, furtively, throwing anxious glances to either side, unfastened a boat made fast to the beach at Hastings, raised the mooring-ring, grasped the oar with a sure hand and made for the open sea. This little girl, whose head had been turned by the visit which the Comte d'Adhémar, the French Ambassador, had paid Lord Stanhope, captivated by the plumed hats of the well-fed lackeys, flattered by the courteous manners and sweeping bows of the Count, had decided to go to France, to see what was happening there.

She had been overtaken far from the land. How well Hester recognised that little adventurous girl!...

But the first stars were shining in the clear sky, and this tall woman in mourning, who had remained motionless for hours, watching without seeing them the varying sports of the grey waves, rose at last and left the bridge while the _Jason_ bore her to the conquest of the Orient.