第7章 CHAPTER III(1)

MR. EDWARD ELLICE, who constantly figures in the memoirs of the last century as 'Bear Ellice' (an outrageous misnomer, by the way), and who later on married my mother, was the chief controller of my youthful destiny. His first wife was a sister of the Lord Grey of Reform Bill fame, in whose Government he filled the office of War Minister. In many respects Mr. Ellice was a notable man. He possessed shrewd intelligence, much force of character, and an autocratic spirit - to which he owed his sobriquet. His kindness of heart, his powers of conversation, with striking personality and ample wealth, combined to make him popular. His house in Arlington Street, and his shooting lodge at Glen Quoich, were famous for the number of eminent men who were his frequent guests.

Mr. Ellice's position as a minister, and his habitual residence in Paris, had brought him in touch with the leading statesmen of France. He was intimately acquainted with Louis Philippe, with Talleyrand, with Guizot, with Thiers, and most of the French men and French women whose names were bruited in the early part of the nineteenth century.

When I was taken from Temple Grove, I was placed, by the advice and arrangement of Mr. Ellice, under the charge of a French family, which had fallen into decay - through the change of dynasty. The Marquis de Coubrier had been Master of the Horse to Charles X. His widow - an old lady between seventy and eighty - with three maiden daughters, all advanced in years, lived upon the remnant of their estates in a small village called Larue, close to Bourg-la-Reine, which, it may be remembered, was occupied by the Prussians during the siege of Paris. There was a chateau, the former seat of the family; and, adjoining it, in the same grounds, a pretty and commodious cottage. The first was let as a country house to some wealthy Parisians; the cottage was occupied by the Marquise and her three daughters.

The personal appearances of each of these four elderly ladies, their distinct idiosyncrasies, and their former high position as members of a now moribund nobility, left a lasting impression on my memory. One might expect, perhaps, from such a prelude, to find in the old Marquise traces of stately demeanour, or a regretted superiority. Nothing of the kind. She herself was a short, square-built woman, with large head and strong features, framed in a mob cap, with a broad frill which flopped over her tortoise-shell spectacles.

She wore a black bombazine gown, and list slippers. When in the garden, where she was always busy in the summer-time, she put on wooden sabots over her slippers.

Despite this homely exterior, she herself was a 'lady' in every sense of the word. Her manner was dignified and courteous to everyone. To her daughters and to myself she was gentle and affectionate. Her voice was sympathetic, almost musical. I never saw her temper ruffled. I never heard her allude to her antecedents.

The daughters were as unlike their mother as they were to one another. Adele, the eldest, was very stout, with a profusion of grey ringlets. She spoke English fluently. I gathered, from her mysterious nods and tosses of the head, (to be sure, her head wagged a little of its own accord, the ringlets too, like lambs' tails,) that she had had an AFFAIRE DE COEUR with an Englishman, and that the perfidious islander had removed from the Continent with her misplaced affections. She was a trifle bitter, I thought - for I applied her insinuations to myself - against Englishmen generally. But, though cynical in theory, she was perfectly amiable in practice. She superintended the menage and spent the rest of her life in making paper flowers. I should hardly have known they were flowers, never having seen their prototypes in nature. She assured me, however, that they were beautiful copies - undoubtedly she believed them to be so.

Henriette, the youngest, had been the beauty of the family.

This I had to take her own word for, since here again there was much room for imagination and faith. She was a confirmed invalid, and, poor thing! showed every symptom of it. She rarely left her room except for meals; and although it was summer when I was there, she never moved without her chauffrette. She seemed to live for the sake of patent medicines and her chauffrette; she was always swallowing the one, and feeding the other.

The middle daughter was Aglae. Mademoiselle Aglae took charge - I may say, possession - of me. She was tall, gaunt, and bony, with a sharp aquiline nose, pomegranate cheek-bones, and large saffron teeth ever much in evidence. Her speciality, as I soon discovered, was sentiment. Like her sisters, she had had her 'affaires' in the plural. A Greek prince, so far as I could make out, was the last of her adorers. But I sometimes got into scrapes by mixing up the Greek prince with a Polish count, and then confounding either one or both with a Hungarian pianoforte player.

Without formulating my deductions, I came instinctively to the conclusion that 'En fait d'amour,' as Figaro puts it, 'trop n'est pas meme assez.' From Miss Aglae's point of view a lover was a lover. As to the superiority of one over another, this was - nay, is - purely subjective. 'We receive but what we give.' And, from what Mademoiselle then told me, I cannot but infer that she had given without stint.

Be that as it may, nothing could be more kind than her care of me. She tucked me up at night, and used to send for me in the morning before she rose, to partake of her CAFE-AU-LAIT.

In return for her indulgences, I would 'make eyes' such as I had seen Auguste, the young man-servant, cast at Rose the cook. I would present her with little scraps which I copied in roundhand from a volume of French poems. Once I drew, and coloured with red ink, two hearts pierced with an arrow, a copious pool of red ink beneath, emblematic of both the quality and quantity of my passion. This work of art produced so deep a sigh that I abstained thenceforth from repeating such sanguinary endearments.