LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1578, 11 March 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

MY STEADY PUPIL. [“All the Year Round-”] * Now, Mr Baker, let as understand each other at once.’ Lord Hunadon had said, leaning back in his official armchair, and tapping the massive signet ring on his fat finger with the official paper cutter. ‘ I have great pleasure, as I have said, in entrusting to you the task of my nephew’s education. All I have heard of yon, and what little I have seen of you, induces me to regard you as an excellent travelling tutor. It only remains for me to state my views as briefly as I can, ’ here a glance at the official clock, * for I have to receive a deputation immediately. Cecil Manvers has a fortune of his own—bis mother’s m-ney—and will in ali probability succeed me in the title and property. I don’t want the boy to turn out a bookworm, a milksop, ora scamp. Make him a wellinformed, English gentleman, with enough knowledge of the world to steer clear of its worst penis, and I shall be more than satisfied. And nothing could o O’. dace better to this than two years on the ' ontinent in such good hands as yours, Mr Baker. I shall see you again, of course, before you leave England, but, just now.’ another glance at the clock, ‘my time is positively not my own,, And I took the under-secretary’s hint, and retired, almost tumbling over the excited deputation as I made my way downstairs. Next week, Cecil Manvers | and I went abroad. Our first year of continental travel passed off p’easantly enough. I found my pupil not merely intelligent and quick to learn, but bright, fraak, and unassuming, and singularly docile for so spirited a lad. The duties of what is sometimes irreverently styled a bear-leader are not always enviable, bnt Cecil, to do him justice, was by far too generous a youe.gster to indulge in the sneers and slights that often fall to the lot of the roving instructor of gilded youth. He had the command < f a good deal of money, for it was a theory of his guardian’s that caGy stinting in this respect lays the foundation for subsequent extravagance, but he showed no inclination for the freaks and follies of his contemporaries, and over and over again did I congratulate myself on the good luck that had provided me with such a pupil. The Rhine, Switzerland, Tyrol, each and all of these we had visited in the pleasant summer time ; we had wintered in Italy, and the next spring found us in Paris. It was the time when the Grand Paris Exhibition—Exhibitions had not as yet grown common enough to be classed as bores—attracted myriads to the then imperial capital of France, Emperor, court, and empire were in their first freshness, decked, too, with the prestige which success confers; for the gnat struggle with Russia was going on victoriously for the allies, and the cordial feeling between Franco and England was at its warmest. In 1855 people had not yet become ashamed of enjoying themselves, and whatever the merits of the show might be, it certainly secured the suffrages of the well-dressed well pleased crowds of holiday makers. My pupil and I made the new Place of Industry our daily lounge, and so did a French friend of ours, destined to play no unimportant part in this story. It was by accident that we had made acquaintance with Colonel the Baron Duplessis. Cecil had a walking-cane, with a handsome gold head which had belonged to his father, and tins cane he chanced to leave on one of the marble tables of the Exhibition monster restaurant. Half an-hour later, when my pupil discovered his loss, and went bacK in hot haste to seek for his missing property, it was courteously restored to him, with a bow and a smile, by a tall, elderly Frenchman, with the inevitable red ribbon adorning his tightly-hottoned frockcoat, and of what his compatriots designated as a distinguished appeal ance. This old officer had observed ourselves as the occupants of a table near his own, and had been prompt enough to prevent the costly walking-stick from being purloined by a light-fingered underwaiter. This little kindness led in time to a friendship which might be called intimate. The colonel, as became a man of ancient lineage and reduced fortunes, lived in a gloomy old street on the left bank of the Seine, far away from the glare and glitter of the modern Paris. The Rue de Loches was the mame of the street, and the colonel’s house, number Sixteen, was on the shady side of it—-a big dingy mansion, with a grassgrown court yard, a walled garden, and win dows into which the sun never seemed to shine. The ghostly pictures on the wall, and the heavy furniture were in keeping with this dismal dwelling. The colonel's family consisted merely of his wife and daughter ; the former haggard and nervous, the latter plain and stupid, with a frightened look, I thought, in her dull eyes. Madame le baronno spoke little, and madamoiselle, like moat well-brought-up French girls, was as mute as a fish. The only attraction in number Sixteen, Rue de Loches, was the gay good humour, tempered by the dignified shrewdness of an experienced rain of the world, of its ma ter. M. Duplessis, even to me, seemed singularly agreeable, and gained a still larger share of Cecil’s regard. 't so ho pened that my pupil had a turn for military subjects—less, perhaps, for dress and drill than for the scientific side of a soldier’s life —and his boyish curiosity ap peared to please the colonel, \>ho himself was, as he said jestingly, merely a worn-out war h irse turned out to grass, but ready to respond to the first twang of the trumpet. So it came about that Cecil ani the baron made frequent excursi ns, now to he present at the trial of a rilled canu -n, now to go over fortifications, see a review, or ramble

! through the arsenal, without my being of the I party, , ~ j Foften happened, too, after tho expeni I tiona I ha' e described, that V’ecil Manvers went to drink t ;, a al’ vse, and pasa the evening nfc the baron’s house. I felt on thus head no misgivings, such »s would have beset me had I allowed my charge to go out alone inStf gayer company. To theatre and op ra, or to those bails and evening receptions of the Parisian groat World to which ' Lord Funsdoii’s left rs procured us easy access, I always accompanied Cecil But I was not sCrry when he seemed to grow indifferent to dance ?ud, drama, and to prefer spending his honrs in the quiet Hue de Bodies. Why not ? I was thankful for the opportunity of finishing my versified translation of Horace, a work from which I hoped to derive fame and f irtnne. And then, ton, I had such cnmplcte confidence in Cecil and in his military mentor. What harm, in such company, could accrue to him ! Mademoiselle’s eyes were not bright enough to win his young affections and the ba'Obne s weak tea, and trictrac at four sous points, would not be likely to derange his nerves or empty hid ppckets. ‘A monsieur,’ hinted the concierge one day, thrusting his bald head into the room where I sat, cudgelling my brains as I strove to convert Ijeshia and Ohloc into honest Knglirh girls, ‘ wishes much to see monsieur.’ The stjanger was not far off, as the janitor of onr furnished hotel thus spoke, and perhaps was accustomed to the process of selfintroduction, At any rate, I soon found myself looking up from the oblong piece of i pasteboard, on which were lithographed the words r ‘ Jules Carnet, Sous- chef: Brigade de c urete, ? at tire owner of name and card, who stood bowing there before me, a glossy hat of the bell-crown pattern, affected by loyal followers of the new emperor, in his gloved hand. There was nothing very notable about my visitor—a plump middle- ' aged Frenchman, with tight coar, well-waxed moustaches, and the imperialist chin-tuft — nothing, except tho feline quickness and keenness of his eye's, which I felt to be reading mo as easily asf if I carried my character, in large print, outftds my waiscoat. ‘ I gather from this card, said I, somewhat bashfully, ‘ that you belong, Mr Carnet,- to the—— ’ 1 ‘To the police <’ rejoined my new acquaintance ; ‘ yes,-motineur, I have the honor to belong to the police.- It is now my duty, in compliance with instructions from headquarters, to apprise you that your pupil— Sir Man vers—is deceiving you.’ , ‘That Cecil Manvers—my pupil-is deI c,eiving me ?’ I repeated, in utter credulity. The Jab dfief of the French detective department lifted his high shoulders In a B hrue that Brasseur oh th** stage might have envied. , , •It is my painful, my distressing duty, he said, in a thick ‘to disturb, monsieur, your beautiful confidence in your youthful friend. What will you, sir? Young men will be young men. It is part of the Herculean task of our superior police to drop a wofd of warning to parents and guardians who are hoodwinked, Ido so, n6w. v ir Manvers—that youth so discreet —he spends his evenings in a private gamb-ling-house, full of the worst company, Rive Gauche, Rue de Inches, number Sixteen.’ On me this extraordinary assertion produced very much the effect of a sudden plunge into cold water. It fairly took away my breath, and I sat gasping and staring in blank amazement Then I rallied my wits sufficiently to reply. There had, I said, been some preposterous mistake, Mr Cecil Manvers passed his evenings in the society of a quiet French family of good position, that of Colonel the Baron Duplessis, But here M Carnet brote in arching his eyebrows!— ‘ Eh, eh, the Baron Duplessis ?’ said he dryly ; ‘ I was not aware that to his epaulettes of colonel he added the baronial coronet, Well, Monsienr Baker, I have dropped you a hint, well intentioned, foi de Carnet! Watch more strictly over your pupil, for the intimacy of the Dnplessis household is apt to prove costly to a neophyte. And’—this more seriously—‘should you require help from the police to cut the knot of this imbroglio, you have only to seek me—me, Jules Carnet at your service. The address I have pencilled, see, on this card, Sev-n, Rue Joachim. I replace, for the next few nights, the commissary at that Bureau ’ And, with a flourish and a bow, he was gone. (To hp continued )