Devereux — Volume 04Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
History
Devereux — Volume 04
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Great Britain -- History -- Anne, 1702-1714 -- Fiction
"Us! with /me/ it is indeed all over: /you/ may stay here forever. I
must fly: a packet-boat to Calais, or a room in the Tower, I must choose
between the two. I had some thoughts of remaining and confronting my
trial: but it would be folly; there is a difference between Oxford and
me. He has friends, though out of power: I have none. If they impeach
him, he will escape; if they impeach me, they will either shut me up
like a rat in a cage, for twenty years, till, old and forgotten, I tear
my heart out with my confinement, or they will bring me at once to the
block. No, no: I must keep myself for another day; and, while they
banish me, I will leave the seeds of the true cause to grow up till my
return. Wise and exquisite policy of my foes,--'/Frustra Cassium
amovisti, si gliscere et vigere Brutorum emulos passurus es.'* But I
have no time to lose: farewell, my friend; God bless you; you are saved
from these storms; and even intolerance, which prevented the exercise of
your genius, preserves you now from the danger of having applied that
genius to the welfare of your country. Heaven knows, whatever my
faults, I have sacrificed what I loved better than all things--study and
pleasure--to her cause. In her wars I served even my enemy Marlborough,
in order to serve her; her peace I effected, and I suffer for it. Be it
so, I am
"'Fidens animi atque in utrumque paratus.'**
"Once more I embrace you; farewell."
* "Vainly have you banished Cassius, if you shall suffer the rivals of
the Brutuses to spread themselves and flourish."
** "Confident of soul and prepared for either fortune."
"Nay," said I, "listen to me; you shall not go alone. France is
already, in reality, my native country: there did I receive my birth; it
is no hardship to return to my /natale solum/; it is an honour to return
in the company of Henry St. John. I will have no refusal: my law case
is over; my papers are few; my money I will manage to transfer.
Remember the anecdote you told me yesterday of Anaxagoras, who, when
asked where his country was, pointed with his finger to heaven. It is
applicable, I hope, as well to me as to yourself: to me, uncelebrated
and obscure; to you, the senator and the statesman."
In vain Bolingbroke endeavoured to dissuade me from this resolution; he
was the only friend fate had left me, and I was resolved that misfortune
should not part us. At last he embraced me tenderly, and consented to
what he could not resist. "But you cannot," he said, "quit England
to-morrow night, as I must."
"Pardon me," I answered, "the briefer the preparation, the greater the
excitement, and what in life is equal to /that/?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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