Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

esses, she strove to coax it from me—from me—ha!ha!“I had an apprentice—the son of a dear friend, whodied by my side at Rossbach, when Soubise, with whosearmy I happened to be, suffered a dreadful defeat forneglecting my advice. The young Chevalier Goby deMouchy was glad enough to serve as my clerk, and helpin some chemical experiments in which I was engagedwith my friend Dr. Mesmer. Bathilde saw this youngman. Since women were, has it not been their businessto smile and deceive, to fondle and lure? Away! Fromthe very first it has been so!” And as my companionspoke, he looked as wicked as the serpent that coiledround the tree, and hissed a poisoned counsel to thefirst woman.“One evening I went, as was my wont, to see Blanche.She was radiant: she was wild with spirits: a saucy triumphblazed in her blue eyes. She talked, she rattled inher childish way. She uttered, in the course of her rhapsody,a hint—an intimation—so terrible that the truthThackeraylie to me. But I know how to make falsehood impossible.Add I ordered her to go to sleep.”At this moment the clock (after its previous convulsions)sounded twelve. And as the new Editor* of theCornhill Magazine—and he, I promise you, won’t standany nonsense—will only allow seven pages, I am obligedto leave off at the very most interesting point of thestory.PART III“Are you of our fraternity? I see you are not. The secretwhich Mademoiselle de Bechamel confided to me in hermad triumph and wild hoyden spirits—she was but achild, poor thing, poor thing, scarce fifteen—but I lovethem young—a folly not unusual with the old!” (HereMr. Pinto thrust his knuckles into his hollow eyes; and,flashed across me in a moment. Did I ask her? She would * Mr. Thackeray retired from the Editorship of the Cornhill Magazinein March, 1862.225