her with a label, and I knew at once she had poisoned herself. She was apparently asleep—what if she were dead? What had she to confess? My fears were momentary, for I found a doctor had just left, who gave slight hopes of her recovering from the large dose of poison she had swallowed. The other woman took up the candle and threw a yellow glare on the sleeper, saying, ‘She’s a bit mithering at times, sir; don’t mind that, she’ll soon come to.’ In a few minutes Sarah Varley began to speak in broken sentences: ‘Money—more! more! Dead men tell no tales.—ha! ha!’ She laughed hideously; then she woke up with a start, and fell back exhausted. After a few minutes the other woman said, ‘Here’s the gentleman you wanted to see, Sarah, that you wanted to tell something to.’ Sarah Varley turned her eyes towards me, and said, faintly, ‘Quick, I’m dying!—lower, lower,’ pulling me convulsively by the arm. I bent down, and she whispered in my ear, ‘He was dead, quite dead; that man tempted me with money, more than I had ever seen before. He put the pen in his hand,—it was cold, quite cold, and he signed the paper.’ Horrified, I exclaimed, ‘Tell me, as you’re a dying woman, who signed the will?’ She replied slowly and distinctly. ‘Mr. Miller; he signed with the dead man’s hand,’ and then she said, wandering, ‘Money! more money!—I will have more!’ I made another effort. ‘I adjure you, Sarah Varley, as you’re a dying woman, is this true?’ She raised herself with an effort, and said, eagerly, ‘It is! it is! I swear it, so—so help—hel—’ Her head fell back—she was dead.’”
ANGLO-INDIA FROM A FRENCH POINT OF VIEW.
A FRENCH NOVEL.—“LA GUERRE DU NIZAM.” PAR MERY.
Few readers of fiction will deny that, in spite of the grave objections to be urged against French novels, there is an animation and interest in them which the English lack. The descendants of the old Trouvères still tell a story with inimitable grace and vivacity; perhaps because, like their romance-weaving ancestors, they are sublimely indifferent to consistency, and to geographical and national realities. Our English novelists are hampered by an innate truthfulness which struggles even with fiction. They cannot endure incorrectness of manners or national habits; they are also checked by the travelled knowledge of their readers. Not so the Trouvère, who writes in this nineteenth century. To his readers—generally untravelled—Paris is the world, French nature the only human nature.
Like our next-door neighbours in London, our near neighbours of France know very little about us. They visit us, trade with us, fight beside us, and yet prove by their writings that they see England and the English through a thick veil of misconception. The writers most friendly to us blunder about our “ways” as amusingly as those who bear the strongest prejudice against us.
We have just finished a tale by Monsieur Mery, the hero of which, a perfect preux chevalier, is an Englishman and there is scarce anything more entertainingly unlike and unreal, than himself, and the events which display his character.
Hear from Monsieur Mery what Anglo-Indian life is, and how Englishmen act in the far East.[1]
The tale begins with an animated description of a ball at Smyrna! given in celebration of the next-day nuptials of a certain Colonel Douglas, who is an officer in the East India Company’s service; and “the real, though not the titular” commander of the English army in India. This gentleman was affianced by the late Lord Byron to a beautiful Greek child whom the poet had adopted, and is bound to marry her or pay 12,000 livres as her marriage portion. Having been engaged in a mysterious war in the Nizam with the Thugs, he is sent for to Whitehall, to explain to the Prime Minister the true circumstances of the affair; is intercepted at Smyrna by the guardian of Amalia (the Greek), and called on to fulfil his engagement. Now, meantime, poor Colonel Douglas has fallen in love with a “Bramahnesse” as she is called, i.e., a Hindoo lady, the daughter of a rich trader in diamonds, and the young Greek has given her heart to a very elegant and melancholy young Pole, who is in exile at Smyrna. Nevertheless, neither makes any open objection to the mariage de convenance forced on them by the English minister, and the ball is at its height, and the civil contract of marriage to be signed before the consul the next day, when a steamer arrives from England bringing the celebrated Sir Edward Klerbbs, who breaks up the festivities with most admired disorder, by summoning Colonel Douglas (by order of Whitehall again!) to return without an hour’s delay to the Nizam, the war having broken out afresh. Amalia’s guardian, Mr. Tower, a clerk in the Foreign Office, is of course compelled to yield to the orders of his Government, but obliges Colonel Douglas to place the forfeited dowry in a banker’s hands for the benefit of his ward. The only person who objects to his departure is a certain young French widow, a Comtesse Octavie de Verzon, who being herself in love with Count Elona, the Pole, is anxious to see a formidable rival removed by the marriage of Amalia. But she tries anger and cajoleries alternately in vain, and sees the gentlemen depart, vowing an eternal hatred to Sir Edward Klerbbs. Meantime Count Elona (unable to bear the expected spectacle of Amalia’s nuptials) has begged a passage in the same vessel, and the three heroes of the tale depart for India together.
We have said the three heroes, but the hero par excellence is undoubtedly Sir Edward Klerbbs, who is evidently the beau ideal of an Englishman in a French imagination. Although he is a “dandy of Kensington Gardens,” he is possessed by a mania for travelling amongst savage nations and exploring unknown lands, so he abandons his noble mansion in Bond Street—which to English ears does not appear so great a sacrifice—to wander in India, and engage in amateur warfare in company with his friend Douglas. He is imperturbably cool, brave, and careless of peril; ruling everyone around him, and always “master of the situation.” This gallant Englishman has a faithful attendant, equally wonderful in his way—a Hindoo, whose- ↑ “La Guerre du Nizam.” Par M. Mery.
