Twenty-two,
allowing for the ladies needful, were thus added to the score of chairs
intended, and the founder of the feast could scarcely tell whether
the toast of the evening was to be the return of the traveller, or the
discomfiture of Boney. That would mainly depend upon the wishes of the
Marquis, and these again were likely to be guided by the treatment
he had met with from the government lately and the commanders of his
Division.
This nobleman was of a character not uncommon eighty years ago, but now
very rare among public men, because a more flexible fibre has choked
it. Steadfast, honourable, simple, and straightforward, able to laugh
without bitterness at the arrogant ignorance of mobs, but never to smile
at the rogues who led them, scorning all shuffle of words, foul haze,
and snaky maze of evasion, and refusing to believe at first sight that
his country must be in the wrong and her enemies in the right, he
added to all these exterminated foibles a leisurely dignity now equally
extinct. Trimmers, time-servers, and hypocrites feared him, as thieves
fear an honourable dog; and none could quote his words against one
another. This would have made him unpopular now, when perjury means
popularity. For the present, however, self-respect existed, and no one
thought any the worse of his lordship for not having found him a liar.
Especially with ladies, who insist on truth in men as a pleasant proof
of their sex, Lord Southdown had always been a prime favourite, and an
authority largely misquoted.
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