“I wish, Mr. Moodie,” suggested I,—­not that I greatly cared about it, however, but was only anxious to draw him into some talk about Priscilla and Zenobia,—­“I wish, while we sit over our wine, you would favor me with a few of those youthful reminiscences.”

“Ah,” said he, shaking his head, “they might interest you more than you suppose.  But I had better be silent, Mr. Coverdale.  If this good wine,—­though claret, I suppose, is not apt to play such a trick,—­ but if it should make my tongue run too freely, I could never look you in the face again.”

“You never did look me in the face, Mr. Moodie,” I replied, “until this very moment.”

“Ah!” sighed old Moodie.

It was wonderful, however, what an effect the mild grape-juice wrought upon him.  It was not in the wine, but in the associations which it seemed to bring up.  Instead of the mean, slouching, furtive, painfully depressed air of an old city vagabond, more like a gray kennel-rat than any other living thing, he began to take the aspect of a decayed gentleman.  Even his garments—­especially after I had myself quaffed a glass or two—­looked less shabby than when we first sat down.  There was, by and by, a certain exuberance and elaborateness of gesture and manner, oddly in contrast with all that I had hitherto seen of him.  Anon, with hardly any impulse from me, old Moodie began to talk.  His communications referred exclusively to a long-past and more fortunate period of his life, with only a few unavoidable allusions to the circumstances that had reduced him to his present state.  But, having once got the clew, my subsequent researches acquainted me with the main facts of the following narrative; although, in writing it out, my pen has perhaps allowed itself a trifle of romantic and legendary license, worthier of a small poet than of a grave biographer.

XXII.  FAUNTLEROY

Five-and-twenty years ago, at the epoch of this story, there dwelt in one of the Middle States a man whom we shall call Fauntleroy; a man of wealth, and magnificent tastes, and prodigal expenditure.  His home might almost be styled a palace; his habits, in the ordinary sense, princely.  His whole being seemed to have crystallized itself into an external splendor, wherewith he glittered in the eyes of the world, and had no other life than upon this gaudy surface.  He had married a lovely woman, whose nature was deeper than his own.  But his affection for her, though it showed largely, was superficial, like all his other manifestations and developments; he did not so truly keep this noble creature in his heart, as wear her beauty for the most brilliant ornament of his outward state.  And there was born to him a child, a beautiful daughter, whom he took from the beneficent hand of God with no just sense of her immortal value, but as a man already rich in gems would receive another jewel.  If he loved her, it was because she shone.