Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush [24]
a coachmin to match; a page: and a Shassure, a kind of servant only known among forriners, and who looks more like a major-general than any other mortial, wearing a cock-hat, a unicorn covered with silver lace, mustashos, eplets, and a sword by his side. All these to wait upon two ladies; not counting a host of the fair sex, such as cooks, scullion, housekeepers, and so forth. My Lady Griffin's lodging was at forty pound a week, in a grand sweet of rooms in the Plas Vandome at Paris. And, having thus described their house, and their servants' hall, I may give a few words of description concerning the ladies themselves. In the fust place, and in coarse, they hated each other. My lady was twenty-seven--a widdo of two years--fat, fair, and rosy. A slow, quiet, cold-looking woman, as those fair-haired gals generally are, it seemed difficult to rouse her either into likes or dislikes; to the former, at least. She never loved any body but ONE, and that was herself. She hated, in her calm, quiet way, almost every one else who came near her--every one, from her neighbor, the duke, who had slighted her at dinner, down to John the footman, who had torn a hole in her train. I think this woman's heart was like one of them lithograffic stones, you CAN'T RUB OUT ANY THING when once it's drawn or wrote on it; nor could you out of her ladyship's stone--heart, I mean--in the shape of an affront, a slight, or real, or phansied injury. She boar an exlent, irreprotchable character, against which the tongue of scandal never wagged. She was allowed to be the best wife posbill-- and so she was; but she killed her old husband in two years, as dead as ever Mr. Thurtell killed Mr. William Weare. She never got into a passion, not she--she never said a rude word; but she'd a genius--a genius which many women have--of making A HELL of a house, and tort'ring the poor creatures of her family, until they were wellnigh drove mad. Miss Matilda Griffin was a good deal uglier, and about as amiable as her mother-in-law. She was crooked, and squinted; my lady, to do her justice, was straight, and looked the same way with her i's. She was dark, and my lady was fair--sentimental, as her ladyship was cold. My lady was never in a passion--Miss Matilda always; and awfille were the scenes which used to pass between these 2 women, and the wickid, wickid quarls which took place. Why did they live together? There was the mistry. Not related, and hating each other like pison, it would surely have been easier to remain seprat, and so have detested each other at a distans. As for the fortune which old Sir George had left, that, it was clear, was very considrabble--300 thousand lb. at the least, as I have heard say. But nobody knew how it was disposed of. Some said that her ladyship was sole mistriss of it, others that it was divided, others that she had only a life inkum, and that the money was all to go (as was natral) to Miss Matilda. These are subjix which are not praps very interesting to the British public, but were mighty important to my master, the Honrable Algernon Percy Deuceace, esquire, barrister-at-law, etsettler, etsettler. For I've forgot to inform you that my master was very intimat in this house; and that we were now comfortably settled at the Hotel Mirabew (pronounced Marobo in French), in the Rew delly Pay, at Paris. We had our cab, and two riding horses; our banker's book, and a thousand pound for a balantz at Lafitt's; our club at the corner of the Rew Gramong; our share in a box at the oppras; our apartments, spacious and elygant; our swarries at court; our dinners at his excellency Lord Bobtail's and elsewhere. Thanks to poar Dawkins's five thousand pound, we were as complete gentlemen as any in Paris. Now my master, like a wise man as he was, seaing himself at the head of a smart sum of money, and in a country where his debts could not bother him, determined to give up for the present every think like gambling--at least, high play; as for losing or winning a ralow of Napoleums at whist or ecarty, it did not matter; it looks like