“Well, fireworks, if you will,” said Lady Davenant, “that rise, blaze, burst, fall, and leave you in darkness, and with a disagreeable smell too; and it’s all _feu d’artifice_ after all. Now in Beauclerc there is too little art and too ardent nature. Some French friends of mine who knew both, said of Mr. Churchill, ‘_De l’esprit on ne peut pas plus même à Paris_,’ the highest compliment a Parisian can pay, but they allowed that Beauclerc had ‘_beaucoup plus d’ame_.’” “Yes,” said Helen; “how far superior!” “It has been said,” continued Lady Davenant, “that it is safer to judge of men by their actions than by their words, but there are few actions and many words in life; and if women would avail themselves of their daily, hourly, opportunities of judging people by their words, they would get at the natural characters, or, what is of just as much consequence, they would penetrate through the acquired habits; and here Helen, you have two good studies before you.” Preoccupied as Helen was with the certainty of Beauclerc being an engaged, almost a married man, and looking, as she did, on Churchill as one who must consider her as utterly beneath his notice, she listened to Lady Davenant’s remarks as she would have done to observations about two characters in a novel or on the stage. As Churchill could not immediately manifest his hatred of Beauclerc, it worked inwardly the more. He did not sleep well this night, and when he got up in the morning, there was something the matter with him. Nervous, bilious--cross it could not be;--_journalier_ (a French word settles everything)--_journalier_ he allowed he was; he rather gloried in it, because his being permitted to be so proved his power,--his prerogative of fortune and talent combined. In the vast competition of the London world, it is not permitted to every man to be in his humour or out of his humour at pleasure; but, by an uncommon combination of circumstances, Churchill had established his privilege of caprice; he was allowed to have his bad and his good days, and the highest people and the finest smiled, and submitted to his “_cachet de faveur et de disgrace_;” and when he was sulky, rude, or snappish, called it only Horace Churchill’s way. They even prided themselves on his preferences and his aversions. “Horace is always charming when he is with us.”--“With me you have no idea how delightful he is.”--“Indeed I must do him the justice to say, that I never found him otherwise.”--While the less favoured permitted him to be as rude as he pleased, and only petted him, and told of his odd ways to those who sighed in vain to have him at their parties. But Lady Davenant was not a person to pet or spoil a child of any age, and to the general, Mr. Churchill was not particularly agreeable--not his sort; while to Lady Cecilia, secure in grace, beauty, and fashion, his humours were only matter of amusement, and she bore with him pleasantly and laughingly.