It is all vanity to be sure, but who will not own to liking a little of
it? I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it
is transitory, dislikes roast beef? That is a vanity, but may every man
who reads this have a wholesome portion of it through life, I beg:
aye, though my readers were five hundred thousand. Sit down, gentlemen,
and fall to, with a good hearty appetite; the fat, the lean, the gravy,
the horse-radish as you like it--don't spare it. Another glass of
wine, Jones, my boy--a little bit of the Sunday side. Yes, let us eat
our fill of the vain thing and be thankful therefor. And let us make
the best of Becky's aristocratic pleasures likewise--for these too,
like all other mortal delights, were but transitory.
The upshot of her visit to Lord Steyne was that His Highness the Prince
of Peterwaradin took occasion to renew his acquaintance with Colonel
Crawley, when they met on the next day at the Club, and to compliment
Mrs. Crawley in the Ring of Hyde Park with a profound salute of the
hat. She and her husband were invited immediately to one of the
Prince's small parties at Levant House, then occupied by His Highness
during the temporary absence from England of its noble proprietor. She
sang after dinner to a very little comite. The Marquis of Steyne was
present, paternally superintending the progress of his pupil.
At Levant House Becky met one of the finest gentlemen and greatest
ministers that Europe has produced--the Duc de la Jabotiere, then
Ambassador from the Most Christian King, and subsequently Minister to
that monarch. I declare I swell with pride as these august names are
transcribed by my pen, and I think in what brilliant company my dear
Becky is moving. She became a constant guest at the French Embassy,
where no party was considered to be complete without the presence of
the charming Madame Ravdonn Cravley. Messieurs de Truffigny (of the
Perigord family) and Champignac, both attaches of the Embassy, were
straightway smitten by the charms of the fair Colonel's wife, and both
declared, according to the wont of their nation (for who ever yet met a
Frenchman, come out of England, that has not left half a dozen families
miserable, and brought away as many hearts in his pocket-book?), both,
I say, declared that they were au mieux with the charming Madame
Ravdonn.
But I doubt the correctness of the assertion. Champignac was very fond
of ecarte, and made many parties with the Colonel of evenings, while
Becky was singing to Lord Steyne in the other room; and as for
Truffigny, it is a well-known fact that he dared not go to the
Travellers', where he owed money to the waiters, and if he had not had
the Embassy as a dining-place, the worthy young gentleman must have
starved. I doubt, I say, that Becky would have selected either of
these young men as a person on whom she would bestow her special
regard. They ran of her messages, purchased her gloves and flowers,
went in debt for opera-boxes for her, and made themselves amiable in a
thousand ways. And they talked English with adorable simplicity, and
to the constant amusement of Becky and my Lord Steyne, she would mimic
one or other to his face, and compliment him on his advance in the
English language with a gravity which never failed to tickle the
Marquis, her sardonic old patron. Truffigny gave Briggs a shawl by way
of winning over Becky's confidante, and asked her to take charge of a
letter which the simple spinster handed over in public to the person to
whom it was addressed, and the composition of which amused everybody
who read it greatly. Lord Steyne read it, everybody but honest Rawdon,
to whom it was not necessary to tell everything that passed in the
little house in May Fair.