Barry Lyndon

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At this period my uncle, who attended mass every day regularly,
always put ten florins into the box. Wherever we went, the tavern-
keepers made us more welcome than royal princes. We used to give
away the broken meat from our suppers and dinners to scores of
beggars who blessed us. Every man who held my horse or cleaned my
boots got a ducat for his pains. I was, I may say, the author of our
common good fortune, by putting boldness into our play. Pippi was a
faint-hearted fellow, who was always cowardly when he began to win.
My uncle (I speak with great respect of him) was too much of a
devotee, and too much of a martinet at play ever to win GREATLY. His
moral courage was unquestionable, but his daring was not sufficient.
Both of these my seniors very soon acknowledged me to be their
chief, and hence the style of splendour I have described.

I have mentioned H.I.H. the Princess Frederica Amelia, who was
affected by my success, and shall always think with gratitude of the
protection with which that exalted lady honoured me. She was
passionately fond of play, as indeed were the ladies of almost all
the Courts in Europe in those days, and hence would often arise no
small trouble to us; for the truth must be told, that ladies love to
play, certainly, but not to PAY. The point of honour is not
understood by the charming sex; and it was with the greatest
difficulty, in our peregrinations to the various Courts of Northern
Europe, that we could keep them from the table, could get their
money if they lost, or, if they paid, prevent them from using the
most furious and extraordinary means of revenge. In those great days
of our fortune, I calculate that we lost no less than fourteen
thousand louis by such failures of payment. A princess of a ducal
house gave us paste instead of diamonds, which she had solemnly
pledged to us; another organised a robbery of the Crown jewels, and
would have charged the theft upon us, but for Pippi's caution, who
had kept back a note of hand 'her High Transparency' gave us, and
sent it to his ambassador; by which precaution I do believe our
necks were saved. A third lady of high (but not princely) rank,
after I had won a considerable sum in diamonds and pearls from her,
sent her lover with a band of cut-throats to waylay me; and it was
only by extraordinary courage, skill, and good luck, that I escaped
from these villains, wounded myself, but leaving the chief aggressor
dead on the ground: my sword entered his eye and broke there, and
the villains who were with him fled, seeing their chief fall. They
might have finished me else, for I had no weapon of defence.

Thus it will be seen that our life, for all its splendour, was one
of extreme danger and difficulty, requiring high talents and courage
for success; and often, when we were in a full vein of success, we
were suddenly driven from our ground on account of some freak of a
reigning prince, some intrigue of a disappointed mistress, or some
quarrel with the police minister. If the latter personage were not
bribed or won over, nothing was more common than for us to receive a
sudden order of departure; and so, perforce, we lived a wandering
and desultory life.

Though the gains of such a life are, as I have said, very great, yet
the expenses are enormous. Our appearance and retinue was too
splendid for the narrow mind of Pippi, who was always crying out at
my extravagance, though obliged to own that his own meanness and
parsimony would never have achieved the great victories which my
generosity had won. With all our success, our capital was not very
great. That speech to the Duke of Courland, for instance, was a mere
boast as far as the two hundred thousand florins at three months
were concerned. We had no credit, and no money beyond that on our
table, and should have been forced to fly if his Highness had won
and accepted our bills. Sometimes, too, we were hit very hard. A
bank is a certainty, ALMOST; but now and then a bad day will come;
and men who have the courage of good fortune, at least, ought to
meet bad luck well: the former, believe me, is the harder task of
the two.

One of these evil chances befell us in the Duke of Baden's
territory, at Mannheim. Pippi, who was always on the look-out for
business, offered to make a bank at the inn where we put up, and
where the officers of the Duke's cuirassiers supped; and some small
play accordingly took place, and some wretched crowns and louis
changed hands: I trust, rather to the advantage of these poor
gentlemen of the army, who are surely the poorest of all devils
under the sun.

But, as ill luck would have it, a couple of young students from the
neighbouring University of Heidelberg, who had come to Mannheim for
their quarter's revenue, and so had some hundred of dollars between
them, were introduced to the table, and, having never played before,
began to win (as is always the case). As ill luck would have it,
too, they were tipsy, and against tipsiness I have often found the
best calculations of play fail entirely. They played in the most
perfectly insane way, and yet won always. Every card they backed
turned up in their favour. They had won a hundred louis from us in
ten minutes; and, seeing that Pippi was growing angry and the luck
against us, I was for shutting up the bank for the night, saying the
play was only meant for a joke, and that now we had had enough.

But Pippi, who had quarrelled with me that day, was determined to
proceed, and the upshot was, that the students played and won more;
then they lent money to the officers, who began to win, too; and in
this ignoble way, in a tavern room thick with tobacco-smoke, across
a deal table besmeared with beer and liquor, and to a parcel of
hungry subalterns and a pair of beardless students, three of the
most skilful and renowned players in Europe lost seventeen hundred
louis! I blush now when I think of it. It was like Charles XII or
Richard Coeur de Lion falling before a petty fortress and an unknown
hand (as my friend Mr. Johnson wrote), and was, in fact, a most
shameful defeat.

Nor was this the only defeat. When our poor conquerors had gone off,
bewildered with the treasure which fortune had flung in their way
(one of these students was called the Baron de Clootz, perhaps he
who afterwards lost his head at Paris), Pippi resumed the quarrel of
the morning, and some exceedingly high words passed between us.
Among other things I recollect I knocked him down with a stool, and
was for flinging him out of the window; but my uncle, who was cool,
and had been keeping Lent with his usual solemnity, interposed
between us, and a reconciliation took place, Pippi apologising and
confessing he had been wrong.

I ought to have doubted, however, the sincerity of the treacherous
Italian; indeed, as I never before believed a word that he said in
his life, I know not why I was so foolish as to credit him now, and
go to bed, leaving the keys of our cash-box with him. It contained,
after our loss to the cuirassiers, in bills and money, near upon
L8000 sterling. Pippi insisted that our reconciliation should be
ratified over a bowl of hot wine, and I have no doubt put some
soporific drug into the liquor; for my uncle and I both slept till
very late the next morning, and woke with violent headaches and
fever: we did not quit our beds till noon. He had been gone twelve
hours, leaving our treasury empty; and behind him a sort of
calculation, by which he strove to make out that this was his share
of the profits, and that all the losses had been incurred without
his consent.

Thus, after eighteen months, we had to begin the world again. But
was I cast down? No. Our wardrobes still were worth a very large sum
of money; for gentlemen did not dress like parish-clerks in those
days, and a person of fashion would often wear a suit of clothes and
a set of ornaments that would be a shop-boy's fortune; so, without
repining for one single minute, or saying a single angry word (my
uncle's temper in this respect was admirable), or allowing the
secret of our loss to be known to a mortal soul, we pawned three-
fourths of our jewels and clothes to Moses Lowe the banker, and with
the produce of the sale, and our private pocket-money, amounting in
all to something less than 800 louis, we took the field again.

CHAPTER X

MORE RUNS OF LUCK

I am not going to entertain my readers with an account of my
professional career as a gamester, any more than I did with
anecdotes of my life as a military man. I might fill volumes with
tales of this kind were I so minded; but at this rate, my recital
would not be brought to a conclusion for years, and who knows how
soon I may be called upon to stop? I have gout, rheumatism, gravel,
and a disordered liver. I have two or three wounds in my body, which
break out every now and then, and give me intolerable pain, and a
hundred more signs of breaking up. Such are the effects of time,
illness, and free-living, upon one of the strongest constitutions
and finest forms the world ever saw. Ah! I suffered from none of
these ills in the year '66, when there was no man in Europe more gay
in spirits, more splendid in personal accomplishments, than young
Redmond Barry.

Before the treachery of the scoundrel Pippi, I had visited many of
the best Courts of Europe; especially the smaller ones, where play
was patronised, and the professors of that science always welcome.
Among the ecclesiastical principalities of the Rhine we were
particularly well received. I never knew finer or gayer Courts than
those of the Electors of Treves and Cologne, where there was more
splendour and gaiety than at Vienna; far more than in the wretched
barrack-court of Berlin. The Court of the Archduchess-Governess of
the Netherlands was, likewise, a royal place for us knights of the
dice-box and gallant votaries of fortune; whereas in the stingy
Dutch or the beggarly Swiss republics, it was impossible for a
gentleman to gain a livelihood unmolested.

After our mishap at Mannheim, my uncle and I made for the Duchy of
X---. The reader may find out the place easily enough; but I do not
choose to print at full the names of some illustrious persons in
whose society I then fell, and among whom I was made the sharer in a
very strange and tragical adventure.

There was no Court in Europe at which strangers were more welcome
than at that of the noble Duke of X---; none where pleasure was more
eagerly sought after, and more splendidly enjoyed. The Prince did
not inhabit his capital of S---, but, imitating in every respect the
ceremonial of the Court of Versailles, built himself a magnificent
palace at a few leagues from his chief city, and round about his
palace a superb aristocratic town, inhabited entirely by his nobles,
and the officers of his sumptuous Court. The people were rather
hardly pressed, to be sure, in order to keep up this splendour; for
his Highness's dominions were small, and so he wisely lived in a
sort of awful retirement from them, seldom showing his face in his
capital, or seeing any countenances but those of his faithful
domestics and officers. His palace and gardens of Ludwigslust were
exactly on the French model. Twice a week there were Court
receptions, and grand Court galas twice a month. There was the
finest opera out of France, and a ballet unrivalled in splendour; on
which his Highness, a great lover of music and dancing, expended
prodigious sums. It may be because I was then young, but I think I
never saw such an assemblage of brilliant beauty as used to figure
there on the stage of the Court theatre, in the grand mythological
ballets which were then the mode, and in which you saw Mars in red-
heeled pumps and a periwig, and Venus in patches and a hoop. They
say the costume was incorrect, and have changed it since; but for my
part, I have never seen a Venus more lovely than the Coralie, who
was the chief dancer, and found no fault with the attendant nymphs,
in their trains, and lappets, and powder. These operas used to take
place twice a week, after which some great officer of the Court
would have his evening, and his brilliant supper, and the dice-box
rattled everywhere, and all the world played. I have seen seventy
play-tables set out in the grand gallery of Ludwigslust, besides the
faro-bank; where the Duke himself would graciously come and play,
and win or lose with a truly royal splendour.

It was hither we came after the Mannheim misfortune. The nobility of
the Court were pleased to say our reputation had preceded us, and
the two Irish gentleman were made welcome. The very first night at
Court we lost 740 of our 800 louis; the next evening, at the Court
Marshal's table, I won them back, with 1300 more. You may be sure we
allowed no one to know how near we were to ruin on the first
evening; but, on the contrary, I endeared every one to me by my gay
manner of losing, and the Finance Minister himself cashed a note for
400 ducats, drawn by me upon my steward of Ballybarry Castle in the
kingdom of Ireland; which very note I won from his Excellency the
next day, along with a considerable sum in ready cash. In that noble
Court everybody was a gambler. You would see the lacqueys in the
ducal ante-rooms at work with their dirty packs of cards; the coach
and chair men playing in the court, while their masters were punting
in the saloons above; the very cook-maids and scullions, I was told,
had a bank, where one of them, an Italian confectioner, made a
handsome fortune: he purchased afterwards a Roman marquisate, and
his son has figured as one of the most fashionable of the
illustrious foreigners in London. The poor devils of soldiers played
away their pay when they got it, which was seldom; and I don't
believe there was an officer in any one of the guard regiments but
had his cards in his pouch, and no more forgot his dice than his
sword-knot. Among such fellows it was diamond cut diamond. What you
call fair play would have been a folly. The gentlemen of Ballybarry
would have been fools indeed to appear as pigeons in such a hawk's
nest. None but men of courage and genius could live and prosper in a
society where every one was bold and clever; and here my uncle and I
held our own: ay, and more than our own.

His Highness the Duke was a widower, or rather, since the death of
the reigning Duchess, had contracted a morganatic marriage with a
lady whom he had ennobled, and who considered it a compliment (such
was the morality of those days) to be called the Northern Dubarry.
He had been married very young, and his son, the Hereditary Prince,
may be said to have been the political sovereign of the State: for
the reigning Duke was fonder of pleasure than of politics, and loved
to talk a great deal more with his grand huntsman, or the director
of his opera, than with ministers and ambassadors.

The Hereditary Prince, whom I shall call Prince Victor, was of a
very different character from his august father. He had made the
Wars of the Succession and Seven Years with great credit in the
Empress's service, was of a stern character, seldom appeared at
Court, except when ceremony called him, but lived almost alone in
his wing of the palace, where he devoted himself to the severest
studies, being a great astronomer and chemist. He shared in the rage
then common throughout Europe, of hunting for the philosopher's
stone; and my uncle often regretted that he had no smattering of
chemistry, like Balsamo (who called himself Cagliostro), St.
Germain, and other individuals, who had obtained very great sums
from Duke Victor by aiding him in his search after the great secret.
His amusements were hunting and reviewing the troops; but for him,
and if his good-natured father had not had his aid, the army would
have been playing at cards all day, and so it was well that the
prudent prince was left to govern.

Duke Victor was fifty years of age, and his princess, the Princess
Olivia, was scarce three-and-twenty. They had been married seven
years, and in the first years of their union the Princess had borne
him a son and a daughter. The stern morals and manners, the dark and
ungainly appearance, of the husband, were little likely to please
the brilliant and fascinating young woman, who had been educated in
the south (she was connected with the ducal house of S---), who had
passed two years at Paris under the guardianship of Mesdames the
daughters of His Most Christian Majesty, and who was the life and
soul of the Court of X---, the gayest of the gay, the idol of her
august father-in-law, and, indeed, of the whole Court. She was not
beautiful, but charming; not witty, but charming, too, in her
conversation as in her person. She was extravagant beyond all
measure; so false, that you could not trust her; but her very
weaknesses were more winning than the virtues of other women, her
selfishness more delightful than others' generosity. I never knew a
woman whose faults made her so attractive. She used to ruin people,
and yet they all loved her. My old uncle has seen her cheating at
ombre, and let her win 400 louis without resisting in the least. Her
caprices with the officers and ladies of her household were
ceaseless: but they adored her. She was the only one of the reigning
family whom the people worshipped. She never went abroad but they
followed her carriage with shouts of acclamation: and, to be
generous to them, she would borrow the last penny from one of her
poor maids of honour, whom she would never pay. In the early days
her husband was as much fascinated by her as all the rest of the
world was; but her caprices had caused frightful outbreaks of temper
on his part, and an estrangement which, though interrupted by almost
mad returns of love, was still general. I speak of her Royal
Highness with perfect candour and admiration, although I might be
pardoned for judging her more severely, considering her opinion of
myself. She said the elder Monsieur de Balibari was a finished old
gentleman, and the younger one had the manners of a courier. The
world has given a different opinion, and I can afford to chronicle
this almost single sentence against me. Besides, she had a reason
for her dislike to me, which you shall hear.

Five years in the army, long experience of the world, had ere now
dispelled any of those romantic notions regarding love with which I
commenced life; and I had determined, as is proper with gentlemen
(it is only your low people who marry for mere affection), to
consolidate my fortunes by marriage. In the course of our
peregrinations, my uncle and I had made several attempts to carry
this object into effect; but numerous disappointments had occurred
which are not worth mentioning here, and had prevented me hitherto
from making such a match as I thought was worthy of a man of my
birth, abilities, and personal appearance. Ladies are not in the
habit of running away on the Continent, as is the custom in England
(a custom whereby many honourable gentlemen of my country have much
benefited!); guardians, and ceremonies, and difficulties of all
kinds intervene; true love is not allowed to have its course, and
poor women cannot give away their honest hearts to the gallant
fellows who have won them. Now it was settlements that were asked
for; now it was my pedigree and title-deeds that were not
satisfactory: though I had a plan and rent-roll of the Ballybarry
estates, and the genealogy of the family up to King Brian Boru, or
Barry, most handsomely designed on paper; now it was a young lady
who was whisked off to a convent just as she was ready to fall into
my arms; on another occasion, when a rich widow of the Low Countries
was about to make me lord of a noble estate in Flanders, comes an
order of the police which drives me out of Brussels at an hour's
notice, and consigns my mourner to her chateau. But at X---I had an
opportunity of playing a great game: and had won it too, but for the
dreadful catastrophe which upset my fortune.

In the household of the Hereditary Princess there was a lady
nineteen years of age, and possessor of the greatest fortune in the
whole duchy. The Countess Ida, such was her name, was daughter of a
late Minister and favourite of his Highness the Duke of X---and his
Duchess, who had done her the honour to be her sponsors at birth,
and who, at the father's death, had taken her under their august
guardianship and protection. At sixteen she was brought from her
castle, where, up to that period, she had been permitted to reside,
and had been placed with the Princess Olivia, as one of her
Highness's maids of honour.

The aunt of the Countess Ida, who presided over her house during her
minority, had foolishly allowed her to contract an attachment for
her cousin-german, a penniless sub-lieutenant in one of the Duke's
foot regiments, who had flattered himself to be able to carry off
this rich prize; and if he had not been a blundering silly idiot
indeed, with the advantage of seeing her constantly, of having no
rival near him, and the intimacy attendant upon close kinsmanship,
might easily, by a private marriage, have secured the young Countess
and her possessions. But he managed matters so foolishly, that he
allowed her to leave her retirement, to come to Court for a year,
and take her place in the Princess Olivia's household; and then what
does my young gentleman do, but appear at the Duke's levee one day,
in his tarnished epaulet and threadbare coat, and make an
application in due form to his Highness, as the young lady's
guardian, for the hand of the richest heiress in his dominions!

The weakness of the good-natured Prince was such that, as the
Countess Ida herself was quite as eager for the match as her silly
cousin, his Highness might have been induced to allow the match, had
not the Princess Olivia been induced to interpose, and to procure
from the Duke a peremptory veto to the hopes of the young man. The
cause of this refusal was as yet unknown; no other suitor for the
young lady's hand was mentioned, and the lovers continued to
correspond, hoping that time might effect a change in his Highness's
resolutions; when, of a sudden, the lieutenant was drafted into one
of the regiments which the Prince was in the habit of selling to the
great powers then at war (this military commerce was a principal
part of his Highness's and other princes' revenues in those days),
and their connection was thus abruptly broken off.

It was strange that the Princess Olivia should have taken this part
against a young lady who had been her favourite; for, at first, with
those romantic and sentimental notions which almost every woman has,
she had somewhat encouraged the Countess Ida and her penniless
lover, but now suddenly turned against them; and, from loving the
Countess, as she previously had done, pursued her with every manner
of hatred which a woman knows how to inflict: there was no end to
the ingenuity of her tortures, the venom of her tongue, the
bitterness of her sarcasm and scorn. When I first came to Court at
X--, the young fellows there had nicknamed the young lady the Dumme
Grafinn, the stupid Countess. She was generally silent, handsome,
but pale, stolid-looking, and awkward; taking no interest in the
amusements of the place, and appearing in the midst of the feasts as
glum as the death's-head which, they say, the Romans used to have at
their tables.

It was rumoured that a young gentleman of French extraction, the
Chevalier de Magny, equerry to the Hereditary Prince, and present at
Paris when the Princess Olivia was married to him by proxy there,
was the intended of the rich Countess Ida; but no official
declaration of the kind was yet made, and there were whispers of a
dark intrigue: which, subsequently, received frightful confirmation.

This Chevalier de Magny was the grandson of an old general officer
in the Duke's service, the Baron de Magny. The Baron's father had
quitted France at the expulsion of Protestants after the revocation
of the edict of Nantes, and taken service in X--, where he died. The
son succeeded him, and, quite unlike most French gentlemen of birth
whom I have known, was a stern and cold Calvinist, rigid in the
performance of his duty, retiring in his manners, mingling little
with the Court, and a close friend and favourite of Duke Victor;
whom he resembled in disposition.

The Chevalier his grandson was a true Frenchman; he had been born in
France, where his father held a diplomatic appointment in the Duke's
service. He had mingled in the gay society of the most brilliant
Court in the world, and had endless stories to tell us of the
pleasures of the petites maisons, of the secrets of the Parc aux
Cerfs, and of the wild gaieties of Richelieu and his companions. He
had been almost ruined at play, as his father had been before him;
for, out of the reach of the stern old Baron in Germany, both son
and grandson had led the most reckless of lives. He came back from
Paris soon after the embassy which had been despatched thither on
the occasion of the marriage of the Princess, was received sternly
by his old grandfather; who, however, paid his debts once more, and
procured him the post in the Duke's household. The Chevalier de
Magny rendered himself a great favourite of his august master; he
brought with him the modes and the gaieties of Paris; he was the
deviser of all the masquerades and balls, the recruiter of the
ballet-dancers, and by far the most brilliant and splendid young
gentleman of the Court.

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