Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray

45
the pit of the "Hoperer" in a green turban and a crumpled yellow satin) talked about the
great HAIRESS to her D. in Bloomsbury Square.
Crowds went to Squab and Lynch's, in Long Acre, to examine the carriages building for
her, so faultless, so splendid, so quiet, so odiously unostentatious and provokingly simple!
Besides the ancestral services of argenterie and vaisselle plate, contained in a hundred and
seventy-six plate-chests at Messrs. Childs', Rumble and Briggs prepared a gold service, and
Garraway, of the Haymarket, a service of the Benvenuto Cellini pattern, which were the
admiration of all London. Before a month it is a fact that the wretched haberdashers in the
city exhibited the blue stocks, called "Heiress-killers, very chaste, two-and-six:" long
before that, the monde had rushed to Madame Crinoline's, or sent couriers to Madame
Marabou, at Paris, so as to have copies of her dresses; but, as the Mantuan bard observes,
"Non cuivis contigit,"—every foot cannot accommodate itself to the chaussure of
Cinderella.
With all this splendor, this worship, this beauty; with these cheers following her, and these
crowds at her feet, was Amethyst happy? Ah, no! It is not under the necklace the most
brilliant that Briggs and Rumble can supply, it is not in Lynch's best cushioned chariot that
the heart is most at ease. "Que je me ruinerai," says Fronsac in a letter to Bossuet, "si je
savais ou acheter le bonheur!"
With all her riches, with all her splendor, Amethyst was wretched—wretched, because
lonely; wretched, because her loving heart had nothing to cling to. Her splendid mansion
was a convent; no male person even entered it, except Franklin Fox, (who counted for
nothing,) and the duchess's family, her kinsman old Lord Humpington, his friend old Sir
John Fogey, and her cousin, the odious, odious Borodino.
The Prince de Borodino declared openly that Amethyst was engaged to him. Crible de
dettes, it is no wonder that he should choose such an opportunity to refaire sa fortune. He
gave out that he would kill any man who should cast an eye on the heiress, and the monster
kept his word. Major Grigg, of the Lifeguards, had already fallen by his hand at Ostend.
The O'Toole, who had met her on the Rhine, had received a ball in his shoulder at
Coblentz, and did not care to resume so dangerous a courtship. Borodino could snuff a
bougie at a hundred and fifty yards. He could beat Bertrand or Alexander Dumas himself
with the small-sword: he was the dragon that watched this pomme d'or, and very few
persons were now inclined to face a champion si redoutable.
Over a salmi d'escargot at the "Coventry," the dandies whom we introduced in our last
volume were assembled, there talking of the heiress; and her story was told by Franklin Fox
to Lord Bagnigge, who, for a wonder, was interested in the tale. Borodino's pretensions
were discussed, and the way in which the fair Amethyst was confined. Fitzbattleaxe House,