+ ~ -
 
Please report pronunciation problems here. Select and sample other voices. Options Pause Play
 
Report an Error
Go!
 
Go!
 
TOC
 

at his post, and the brutal wheels of tyranny
have passed over his bones."

Now, leaving poor Stanislas' grave, bear
me, Memory, back to the Café Restaurant à
la Cagmaggerie, and fill my ears again with the
shuffle of the dominoes and the rattle of the red
and the white billiard balls. I would write of
my third refugee friend: that stupendous and
astounding rascal, the Prince Gargarelli, of
Palermo.

Poor Stanislas first introduced me to him at
the Café Restaurant à la Cagmaggerie, where
the prince was intent on a carambole game of
billiards. He looked very like a dandy
billiard-marker. He was very short and dapper,
and wore very high-heeled glistening little
boots. His clothes were glossy new, and of
the extremest cut. His pale fingers glistened
with triple rings. In his scarf he wore an
immense emerald. I left him, and thought no more
of him until ten days after, when a dirty-looking
man, very much like a Jew old clothesman, called
on me at my office (I was then a solicitor in Gray's
Inn), and introduced himself in broken English
as the homme d'affaires, the man of business, of
the Prince Gargarelli, of Palermo. The painful
fact (after many rhetorical subterfuges) soon
came out. The Prince, having got terribly into
debt, was in the Bench. He wanted my aid to
raise money to get him out of that stronghold.
The chief characteristics of the prince's
ambassador were thick black eyebrows, a red hook
nose, greasy black clothes, and a voluminous
umbrella with a hook handle.

The ambassador assumed a very high tone.
The loan was a purely temporary onea mere
stop-gap for a week or sothe prince's family,
in fact, rolling in riches. The prince's father,
Prince Paul, had but to be written to, and would
instantly freight a ship with Sicilian gold, and
bear away his too prodigal son in triumph. The
Bond-street jeweller, who wanted his money,
was one " tamned dirty rascal, with no
conscience, mon Dieu, no honour;" the prince was
an accomplished gentleman, embarrassed by
"tamned rascale tradesmen, horse-keeper and
carriage-keeper, and your horrible jeweller of
ole Bond-street."

The ambassador, flashing before me the glittering
title of prince, took me, I could see, for an
easy prey.

"But if the prince is so rich," said I, with
merciless logic, " how is it he stops in the
Bench?"

The ambassador laughed compassionately at
my ignorance. " Ha! ha! He vait for von
remittance, that all; for one remittance from
Prince Paul, de fader."

"Is the father rich?"

The ambassador stamped his umbrella,
and assumed a low and solemn tone of voice.
"He is de richest man on the continent of
Europe. He has vine-yard, olive-yard, orange-
yard, citron-yard, court-yard; he has one
million English pound a year."

I appeared overcome. " And the prince in
the Bench is, I suppose, the eldest son, what we
call in England the heir apparent?"

The dirty ambassador was all smiles. I had
not only exactly caught his idea, but I had even
anticipated his idea.

"Yase, yase. Ah! You have the esprit vif.
Yase, de eldest son of de fader, Prince Paul
de son who vill vear de crown vid de bar on de
head. Prince Paul, de fader, is richer than any
von in Europe, barring de crown.

"Oh!" said I, trying to help his staggering
English, "you mean the richest man barring
crowned heads."

"Yase, yase" (delighted to catch at this
expression, and evidently treasuring it up for
future use, as he slowly repeated it). "Yase,
barring crowned heads. The Prince vait for
von remittance." (Here a sudden wheedling
thought struck him.) "Do you— (aimez vouz)—
do you like orange?"

I expressed my peculiar attachment to that
fruit.

"De Prince have orange field enorme. He
vill send you two chest of orange. Do you like
feeg?"

I said I particularly esteemed the fig.

"Very veil; he has feeg tree, miles of feeg
tree. He vill write to Prince Paul to send
many boxes of feeg with remittance. Do you
love citron?"

I said again, yes. And here also I was to be
remembered.

"Ah! Do you like, then, Lachrymae Christee,
de vine of de tears?"

I said, " Indeed I do!" But the bribery and
corruption was now growing a little too bare-
faced, and I said it with rather a distrustful and
spiteful emphasis.

"All raite" (here the dirty German Jew
tapped me on the arm and smiled horribly to
express entire admiration and confidence). "The
vine-yard of Lachrymae Christee belong to Prince
Paul. He vill send you two cask, vith the
remittance."

But why continue? Need I say that the loan
was never raised, and that the remittance from
the enormously rich noble of Palermo never
came? I went to see the prince in the Bench,
and found him playing at rackets in a flowered
chintz dressing-gown, gay, and prodigal of
promises as ever. He may be there now for
anything I know.

I have written these lines, to draw attention
to the pathetic rather than to the humorous
side of an exile's life. We, at home happy, are
apt to be distrustful of men whom we too often
associate with runaway swindlers, foreign assassins,
degraded officers, fugitive gamblers, and
outlawed homicides. Some such there are, no
doubt, among the motley crowds that throng
Leicester-square and the dim regions of Soho;
but I believe that the majority are honest brave
sincere men, driven into misery merely by the
sincerity and the earnest steadfastness with
which they hold certain political opinions
horrible opinions in the home-land they have lost
embracing the wish for a free press, a free