Paul Clifford — Complete. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон

      By this time the whole conclave were more than half-seas over, or, as Augustus Tomlinson expressed it, “their more austere qualities were relaxed by a pleasing and innocent indulgence.” Paul’s eyes reeled, and his tongue ran loose. By degrees the room swam round, the faces of his comrades altered, the countenance of Old Bags assumed an awful and menacing air. He thought Long Ned insulted him, and that Old Bags took the part of the assailant, doubled his fist, and threatened to put the plaintiff’s nob into chancery if he disturbed the peace of the meeting. Various other imaginary evils beset him. He thought he had robbed a mail-coach in company with Pepper; that Tomlinson informed against him, and that Gentleman George ordered him to be hanged; in short, he laboured under a temporary delirium, occasioned by a sudden reverse of fortune,—from water to brandy; and the last thing of which he retained any recollection, before he sank under the table, in company with Long Ned, Scarlet Jem, and Old Bags, was the bearing his part in the burden of what appeared to him a chorus of last dying speeches and confessions, but what in reality was a song made in honour of Gentleman George, and sung by his grateful guests as a finale of the festivities. It ran thus:—

THE ROBBER’S GRAND TOAST

                A tumbler of blue ruin, fill, fill for me!

                Red tape those as likes it may drain;

                But whatever the lush, it a bumper must be,

                If we ne’er drinks a bumper again!

                Now—now in the crib, where a ruffler may lie,

                Without fear that the traps should distress him,

                With a drop in the mouth, and a drop in the eye,

                Here’s to Gentleman George,—God bless him!

                God bless him, God bless him!

                Here’s to Gentleman George,—God bless him!

                ‘Mong the pals of the prince I have heard it’s the go,

                Before they have tippled enough,

                To smarten their punch with the best curagoa,

                More conish to render the stuff.

                I boast not such lush; but whoever his glass

                Does not like, I’ll be hanged if I press him!

                Upstanding, my kiddies,—round, round let it pass!

                Here’s to Gentleman George,—God bless him!

                God bless him, God bless him!

                Here’s to Gentleman George,-God bless him!

                See, see, the fine fellow grows weak on his stumps;

                Assist him, ye rascals, to stand!

                Why, ye stir not a peg!  Are you all in the dumps?

                Fighting Attie, go, lend him a hand!

      (The robbers crowd around Gentleman George, each, under pretence of supporting him, pulling him first one way and then another.)

                Come, lean upon me,—at your service I am!

                Get away from his elbow, you whelp!  him

                You’ll only upset,—them ‘ere fellows but sham!

                Here’s to Gentleman George,—God help him!

                God help him, God help him!

                Here’s to Gentleman George, God help him!

      CHAPTER XI

      I boast no song in magic wonders rife;

      But yet, O Nature! is there nought to prize,

      Familiar in thy bosom scenes of life?

      And dwells in daylight truth’s salubrious skies

      No form with which the soul may sympathize?

      Young, innocent, on whose sweet forehead mild

      The parted ringlet shone in simplest guise,

      An inmate in the home of Albert smiled,

      Or blessed his noonday walk,—she was his only child.

Gertrude of Wyoming.

      O time, thou hast played strange tricks with us; and we bless the stars that made us a novelist, and permit us now to retaliate. Leaving Paul to the instructions of Augustus Tomlinson and the festivities of the Jolly Angler, and suffering him, by slow but sure degrees, to acquire the graces and the reputation of the accomplished and perfect appropriator of other men’s possessions, we shall pass over the lapse of years with the same heedless rapidity with which they have glided over us, and summon our reader to a very different scene from those which would be likely to greet his eyes, were he following the adventures of our new Telemachus. Nor wilt thou, dear reader, whom we make the umpire between ourself and those who never read,—the critics; thou who hast, in the true spirit of gentle breeding, gone with us among places where the novelty of the scene has, we fear, scarcely atoned for the coarseness, not giving thyself the airs of a dainty abigail,—not prating, lacquey-like, on the low company thou has met,—nor wilt thou, dear and friendly reader, have cause to dread that we shall weary thy patience by a “damnable iteration” of the same localities. Pausing for a moment to glance over the divisions of our story, which lies before us like a map, we feel that we may promise in future to conduct thee among aspects of society more familiar to thy habits; where events flow to their allotted gulf through landscapes of more pleasing variety and among tribes of a more luxurious civilization.