Ernest Maltravers — Complete

“A hundred fathers would in my situation tell you that, as you are of noble extraction, you should marry a nobleman. But I do not say so. I will not sacrifice my child to any pr...

“Je connois des princes du sang, des princes etrangers, des grands seigneurs, des ministres d’etat, des magistrats, et des philosophes qui fileroient pour l’amour de vous. En po...

“Sober he was, and grave from early youth, Mindful of forms, but more intent on truth; In a light drab he uniformly dress’d, And look serene th’ unruffled mind express’d.

The Beautiful Clime!--the Clime of Love! Thou beautiful Italy! Like a mother’s eyes, the earnest skies Ever have smiles for thee! Not a flower that blows, not a beam that glows,...

IT may seem strange, but Maltravers had never loved Lady Florence as he did now. Was it the perversity of human nature that makes the things of mortality dearer to us in proport...

“Deceit is the strong but subtle chain which runs through all the members of a society, and links them together; trick or be tricked is the alternative; ‘tis the way of the worl...

“My meaning in’t, I protest, was very honest in the behalf of the maid * * * * yet, who would have suspected an ambush where I was taken?” _All’s Well that Ends Well_, Act iv. S...

IT seemed as if the compact Maltravers and Lady Florence had entered into removed whatever embarrassment and reserve had previously existed. They now conversed with an ease and...

“It cannot be too deeply impressed on the mind, that application is the price to be paid for mental acquisitions, and that it is as absurd to expect them without it as to hope f...

“But who is this? thought he, a demon vile. With wicked meaning and a vulgar style; Hammond they call him--they can give the name Of man to devils. Why am I so tame? Why crush I...

THE coach dropped Mr. Ferrers at the gate of a villa about three miles from town. The lodge-keeper charged himself with the carpet-bag, and Ferrers strolled, with his hands behi...

“SEE her to-morrow!--that morrow is come!” thought Maltravers, as he rose the next day from a sleepless couch. Ere yet he had obeyed the impatient summons of Ferrers, who had th...

MALTRAVERS found Alice as docile a pupil as any reasonable preceptor might have desired. But still, reading and writing--they are very uninteresting elements! Had the groundwork...

IT was a brilliant ball at the Palazzo of the Austrian embassy at Naples: and a crowd of those loungers, whether young or old, who attach themselves to the reigning beauty, was...

“Alas! what boots it with incessant care To strictly meditate the thankless Muse; Were I not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles...

ERNEST MALTRAVERS was at the height of his reputation; the work which he had deemed the crisis that was to make or mar him was the most brilliantly successful of all he had yet...

“You see, my dear Lumley,” said Lord Saxingham, as the next day the two kinsmen were on their way to London in the earl’s chariot, “you see that at the best this marriage of Flo...

IT was two hours after that scene before Maltravers left the house. It was then just on the stroke of the first hour of morning. To him, while he walked through the streets, and...

ERNEST MALTRAVERS spent much of his time with the family of De Montaigne. There is no period of life in which we are more accessible to the sentiment of friendship than in the i...

MR. TEMPLETON had not obtained his peerage, and, though he had met with no direct refusal, nor made even a direct application to headquarters, he was growing sullen. He had grea...

IT was a smaller party than usual the next day, consisting only of Lord Doningdale, his son George Herbert, Valerie and Ernest. They were returning from the ruins, and the sun,...

MALTRAVERS did not see Lady Florence again for some weeks; meanwhile, Lumley Ferrers made his _debut_ in parliament. Rigidly adhering to his plan of acting on a deliberate syste...

“The pride too of her step, as light Along the unconscious earth she went, Seemed that of one born with a right To walk some heavenlier element.” _Loves of the Angels._

“I CAN’T think,” said one of a group of young men, loitering by the steps of a clubhouse in St. James’s Street--“I can’t think what has chanced to Maltravers. Do you observe (as...

“_Miramont._--Do they chafe roundly? _Andrew._--As they were rubbed with soap, sir, And now they swear aloud, now calm again Like a ring of bells, whose sound the wind still utt...

“Then ‘gan the Palmer thus--‘Most wretched man That to affections dost the bridle lend: In their beginnings they are weak and wan, But soon, through suffrance, growe to fearfull...

CLEVELAND’S villa _was_ full, and of persons usually called agreeable. Amongst the rest was Lady Florence Lascelles. The wise old man had ever counselled Maltravers not to marry...

MR. FREDERICK CLEVELAND, a younger son of the Earl of Byrneham, and therefore entitled to the style and distinction of “Honourable,” was the guardian of Ernest Maltravers. He wa...

I FEAR that as yet Ernest Maltravers had gained little from Experience, except a few current coins of worldly wisdom (and not very valuable those!) while he has lost much of tha...

WITH a heavy step Maltravers ascended the stairs of his lonely house that night, and heavily, with a suppressed groan, did he sink upon the first chair that proffered rest.

IT was just two years from the night in which Alice had been torn from the cottage: and at that time Maltravers was wandering amongst the ruins of ancient Egypt, when, upon the...

IT was just twelve months after his last interview with Valerie, and Madame de Ventadour had long since quitted England, when one morning, as Maltravers sat alone in his study,...

THE smooth physician had paid his evening visit; Lord Saxingham had gone to a cabinet dinner, for Life must ever walk side by side with Death: and Lady Florence Lascelles was al...

MALTRAVERS was first at the appointed place. His character was in most respects singularly energetic, decided, and premature in its development; but not so in regard to women: w...

“I, alas! Have lived but on this earth a few sad years; And so my lot was ordered, that a father First turned the moments of awakening life To drops, each poisoning youth’s swee...

MANY days had passed, and Alice was still alone; but she had heard twice from Maltravers. The letters were short and hurried. One time his father was better, and there were hope...

NOT a day passed in which Maltravers was absent from the side of Florence. He came early, he went late. He subsided into his former character of an accepted suitor, without a wo...

IT was a lovely evening in April, the weather was unusually mild and serene for the time of year, in the northern districts of our isle, and the bright drops of a recent shower...

* * * * “Le brillant de votre esprit donne un si grand eclat a votre teint et a vos yeux, que quoiqu’il semble que l’esprit ne doit toucher que les oreilles, il est pourtaut cer...

As education does not consist in reading and writing only, so Alice, while still very backward in those elementary arts, forestalled some of their maturest results in her interc...

IT was just when Ernest Maltravers was so bad that he could not be worse that a young man visited Temple Grove. The name of this young man was Lumley Ferrers, his age was about...

“But if a little exercise you choose, Some zest for ease, ‘tis not forbidden here; Amid the groves you may indulge the Muse, Or tend the blooms and deck the vernal year.” _Castl...

“Began to bend down his admiring eyes On all her touching looks and qualities, Turning their shapely sweetness every way Till ‘twas his food and habit day by day.” LEIGH HUNT.

THE next day, punctual to his appointment, Cesarini repaired to his critical interview with Lady Florence. Her countenance, which, like that of most persons whose temper is not...

“In this disposition was I, when looking out of my window one day to take the air, I perceived a kind of peasant who looked at me very attentively.”--GIL BLAS.

IT was two years from the date of the last chapter before Maltravers again appeared in general society. These two years had sufficed to produce a revolution in his fate. Ernest...

IT was a fine morning in July, when a gentleman who had arrived in town the night before--after an absence from England of several years--walked slowly and musingly up the super...

LORD VARGRAVE was sitting alone in his library, with his account-books before him. Carefully did he cast up the various sums which, invested in various speculations, swelled his...

THERE was something in De Montaigne’s conversation, which, without actual flattery, reconciled Maltravers to himself and his career. It served less, perhaps, to excite than to s...

MEANWHILE the betrothed were on their road to London. The balmy and serene beauty of the day had induced them to perform the short journey on horseback. It is somewhere said, th...

THE wound which Maltravers had received was peculiarly severe and rankling. It is true that he had never been what is called violently in love with Florence Lascelles; but from...

AS Lumley leapt from his horse at his uncle’s door, the disorder and bustle of those demesnes, in which the severe eye of the master usually preserved a repose and silence as co...

“The men of sense, those idols of the shallow, are very inferior to the men of Passions. It is the strong passions which, rescuing us from sloth, can alone impart to us that con...

“YES,” said De Montaigne, “in my way I also am fulfilling my destiny. I am a member of the _Chambre des Deputes_, and on a visit to England upon some commercial affairs. I found...

ALTHOUGH the character of Maltravers was gradually becoming more hard and severe,--although as his reason grew more muscular, his imagination lost something of its early bloom,...

IT was about nine o’clock that evening, and Maltravers was alone in his room. His carriage was at the door--his servants were arranging the luggage--he was going that night to B...

I HAVE no respect for the Englishman who re-enters London after long residence abroad without a pulse that beats quick and a heart that heaves high. The public buildings are few...

THE tench, no doubt, considers the pond in which he lives as the Great World. There is no place, however stagnant, which is not the great world to the creatures that move about,...

“Yet he beholds her with the eyes of mind-- He sees the form which he no more shall meet; She like a passionate thought is come and gone, While at his feet the bright rill bubbl...

IT was about this time that the stranger deemed it advisable to commence his retreat. The slight and suppressed sound of voices, which at first he had heard above in the convers...

IT was a fine afternoon in December, when Lumley Ferrers turned from Lord Saxingham’s door. The knockers were muffled--the windows on the third story were partially closed. Ther...

AND many were thy trials, poor child; many that, were this book to germinate into volumes more numerous than monk ever composed upon the lives of saint or martyr (though a hundr...

AND now Alice felt that she was on the wide world alone, with her child--no longer to be protected, but to protect; and after the first few days of agony, a new spirit, not inde...

ERNEST stayed several days at Lord Doningdale’s, and every day he rode out with Valerie, but it was with a large party; and every evening he conversed with her, but the whole wo...

FERRERS and Cesarini were both sitting over their wine, and both had sunk into silence, for they had only one subject in common, when a note was brought to Lumley from Lady Flor...

“There are times when we are diverted out of errors, but could not be preached out of them.--There are practitioners who can cure us of one disorder, though, in ordinary cases,...

THE day dawned; it was a mild, damp, hazy morning; the sod sank deep beneath the foot, the roads were heavy with mire, and the rain of the past night lay here and there in broad...

By degrees, as Maltravers sobered down from the first shock of that unexpected meeting, and from the prolonged disappointment that followed it, he became sensible of a strange k...

WE are apt to connect the voice of Conscience with the stillness of midnight. But I think we wrong that innocent hour. It is that terrible “NEXT MORNING,” when reason is wide aw...

LUMLEY hastened to strike while the iron was hot. The next morning he went straight to the Treasury--saw the managing secretary, a clever, sharp man, who, like Ferrers, carried...

HITHERTO Ernest had never met with any mind that had exercised a strong influence over his own. At home, at school, at Gottingen, everywhere, he had been the brilliant and waywa...

WHEN Maltravers entered the enormous saloon, hung with damask, and decorated with the ponderous enrichments and furniture of the time of Louis XIV. (that most showy and barbarou...

NINE times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from Youth to Manhood. That interval is usually occupied by an ill-placed or disappointed affec...

“Je trouve que c’est une folie de vouloir etudier le monde en simple spectateur. * * * Dans l’ecole du monde, comme dans cette de l’amour, il faut commencer par pratiquer cc qu’...

MALTRAVERS left Doningdale the next day. He had no further conversation with Valerie; but when he took leave of her, she placed in his hand a letter, which he read as he rode sl...

“Thy due from me Is tears: and heavy sorrows of the blood, Which nature, love, and filial tenderness Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously!” _Second Part of Henry IV._, Act...

My hero, turned author, lies mute in this section, You may pass by the place if you’re bored by reflection: But if honest enough to be fond of the Muse, Stay, and read where you...

“Youth pastures in a valley of its own: The glare of noon--the rains and winds of heaven Mar not the calm yet virgin of all care. But ever with sweet joys it buildeth up The air...