Devereux — Volume 06Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
History
Devereux — Volume 06
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Great Britain -- History -- Anne, 1702-1714 -- Fiction
I have said that I had adopted his advice in one instance. The fact of
having received his advice,--the advice of one so pious, so free from
human passion, so devoted to one object, which appeared to him the cause
of Religion; advice, too, in a love so fiery and overwhelming, that fact
made me think myself less criminal than I had done before. He advised
me yet further. "Do not seek Isora," he said, "till some time has
elapsed; till her new-born love for your brother has died away; till the
impression of fear you have caused in her is somewhat effaced; till time
and absence, too, have done their work in the mind of Morton, and you
will no longer have for your rival one who is not only a brother, but a
man of a fierce, resolute, and unrelenting temper."
I yielded to this advice: partly because it promised so fair; partly
because I was not systematically vicious, and I wished, if possible, to
do away with our rivalship; and principally, because I knew, in the
meanwhile, that if I was deprived of her presence, so also were you; and
jealousy with me was a far more intolerable and engrossing passion than
the very love from which it sprang. So time passed on: you affected to
have conquered your attachment; you affected to take pleasure in levity
and the idlest pursuits of worldly men. I saw deeper into your heart;
for the moment I entertained the passion of love in my own breast, my
eyes became gifted with a second vision to penetrate the most mysterious
and hoarded secrets in the love of others.
Two circumstances of importance happened before you left Devereux Court
for London; the one was the introduction to your service of Jean
Desmarais, the second was your breach with Montreuil. I speak now of
the first. A very early friend did the priest possess, born in the same
village as himself and in the same rank of life; he had received a good
education and possessed natural genius. At a time when, from some fraud
in a situation of trust which he had held in a French nobleman's family,
he was in destitute and desperate circumstances, it occurred to
Montreuil to provide for him by placing him in our family. Some
accidental and frivolous remark of yours which I had repeated in my
correspondence with Montreuil as illustrative of your manner, and your
affected pursuits at that time, presented an opportunity to a plan
before conceived. Desmarais came to England in a smuggler's vessel,
presented himself to you as a servant, and was accepted. In this plan
Montreuil had two views: first, that of securing Desmarais a place in
England, tolerably profitable to himself and convenient for any plot or
scheme which Montreuil might require of him in this country; secondly,
that of setting a perpetual and most adroit spy upon all your motions.
As to the second occurrence to which I have referred; namely, your
breach with Montreuil--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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