University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
HOW THREE PERSONS IN THIS HISTORY CAME BY THEIR
NAMES.

ON a fine May morning in the year 1764,—that is to
say, between the peace at Fontainebleau and the
stamp act agitation, which great events have fortunately
no connection with the present narrative,—a young man
mounted on an elegant horse, and covered from head to
foot with lace, velvet, and embroidery, stopped before a
small house in the town or city of Williamsburg, the
capital of Virginia.

Negligently delivering his bridle into the hands of a
diminutive negro, the young man entered the open door,
ascended a flight of stairs which led to two or three
small rooms above, and turning the knob, attempted to
enter the room opening upon the street.

The door opened a few inches, and then was suddenly
closed by a heavy body thrown against it.

“Back!” cried a careless and jovial voice, “back!
base proctor—this is my castle.”

“Open! open!” cried the visitor.

“Never!” replied the voice.

The visitor kicked the door, to the great damage of his
Spanish shoes.

“Beware!” cried the hidden voice; “I am armed
to the teeth, and rather than be captured I will die in
defence of my rights—namely, liberty, property, and
the pursuit of happiness under difficulties.”

“Tom! you are mad.”

“What? that voice? not the proctor's!”

“No, no,” cried the visitor, kicking again; “Jacquelin's.”

“Ah, ah!”

And with these ejaculations the inmate of the chamber
was heard drawing back a table, then the butt of
a gun sounded upon the floor, and the door opened.

The young man who had asserted his inalienable natural
rights with so much fervor was scarcely twenty—at
least he had not reached his majority. He was richly
clad, with the exception of an old faded dressing gown,
which fell gracefully like a Roman toga around his legs;
and his face was full of intelligence and careless, somewhat
cynical humor. The features were hard and pointed,
the mouth large, the hair sandy with a tinge of red.

“Ah, my dear forlorn lover!” he cried, grasping his
visitor's hand, “I thought you were that rascally proctor,
and was really preparing for a hand-to-hand conflict,
to the death.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, sir! could I expect anything else, from the way
you turned my knob? You puzzled me.”

“So I see,” said his visitor; “you had your gun, and
were evidently afraid.”

“Afraid? Never!”

“Afraid of your shadow!”

“At least I never would have betrayed fear had I seen
you!” retorted the occupant of the chamber. “You are
so much in love that a fly need not be afraid of you.
Poor Jacquelin! poor melancholy Jacques! a feather
would knock you down.”

The melancholy Jacques sat down sighing.

“The fact is, my dear fellow,” he said, “I am the
victim of misfortune: but who complains? I don't, especially
to you, you great lubber, shut up here in your
den, and with no hope or fear on earth, beyond pardon
of your sins of commission at the college, and dread
of the proctor's grasp! You are living a dead life, while
I—ah! don't speak of it. What were you reading?”

“That deplorable Latin song. Salve your ill-humor
with it!”

And he handed his visitor, by this time stretched
carelessly upon a lounge, the open volume. He read:

“Good,” said the visitor satirically; “that suits you
—except it should be `occidentis partibus:' our Sir
Asinus comes from the west. And by my faith, I think
I will in future dub you Sir Asinus, in revenge for calling
me—me, the most cheerful of light-hearted mortals
—the `melancholy Jacques.' ”

“Come, come!” said the gentleman threatened with
this sobriquet, “that's too bad, Jacques.”

“Jacques! You persist in calling me Jacques, just as
you persist in calling Belinda, Campana in die—Bell in
day. What a deplorable witticism! I could find a
better in a moment. Stay,” he added, “I have discovered
it already.”

“What is it, pray, most sapient Jacques?”

“Listen, most long-eared Sir Asinus.”

And the young man read once again:

“Well,” said his friend, “now that you have mangled
that French with your wretched pronunciation, please
explain how my lovely Belinda—come, don't sigh and
scowl because I say `my,' for you know it's all settled
—tell me where in these lines you find her name.”

“In the second,” sighed Jacques.

“Oh yes!—bah!”

“There you are sneering. You make a miserable
Latin pun, by which you translate Belinda into Campana
in die—Bell in day—and when I improve your
idea, making it really good, you sneer.”

“Really, now!—well, I don't say!”

“Belle-bouche! Could any thing be finer? `Pretty-mouth!'
And then the play upon Bel, in Belinda, by
the word Belle. Positively, I will in future call her
nothing else. Belle-bouche—pretty-mouth! Ah!

And the unfortunate lover stretched languidly upon
the lounge, studied the ceiling, and sighed piteously.

His friend burst into a roar of laughter. Jacques—for
let us adopt the sobriquets all round—turned negligently
and said:

“Pray what are you braying at, Sir Asinus?”

“At your sighs.”

“Did I sigh?”

“Yes, portentously!”

“I think you are mistaken.”

“No!”

“I never sigh.”

And the melancholy Jacques uttered a sigh which
was enough to shatter all his bulk.

The consequence was that Sir Asinus burst into a
second roar of laughter louder than before, and said:

“Come, my dear Jacques, unbosom! You have been
to see——”

“Belle-bouche—Belle-bouche: but I am not in love
with her.”

“Oh no—of course not,” said his friend, laughing
ironically.

Jacques sighed.

“She don't like me,” he said forlornly.

“She's very fond of me though,” said his friend.
“Only yesterday—but I am mad to be talking about
it.”

With which words Sir Asinus turned away his head to
hide his mischievous and triumphant smile.

Poor Jacques looked more forlorn than ever; which
circumstance seemed to afford his friend extreme delight.

“Why not pay your addresses to Philippa, Jacques my
boy?” he said satirically; “there's no chance for you
with Belle-bouche, as you call her.”

“Philippa? No, no!” sighed Jacques; “she's too
brilliant.”

“For you?”

“Even for me—me, the prince of wits, and coryphæus
of coxcombs: yes, yes!”

And the melancholy Jacques sighed again, and looked
around him with the air of a man whose last hope on
earth has left him.

His friend chokes down a laugh; and stretching himself
in the bright spring sunshine pouring through the
window, says with a smile:

“Come, make a clean breast of it, old fellow. You
were there to-day?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Have a pleasant time?”

“Can't say I did.”

“Were there any visitors?”

“A dozen—you understand the description of visitors.”

“No; what sort?”

“Fops in embryo, and aspirants after wit-laurels.”

“It is well you went—they must have been thrown
in the shade. For you, my dear Jacques, are undeniably
the most perfect fop, and the greatest wit—in your own
opinion—of this pleasant village of Devilsburg.”

“No, no,” replied his companion with well-affected
modesty; “I a fop! I a pretender to wit? No, no, my
dear Sir Asinus, you do me injustice: I am the simplest
of mortals, and a very child of innocence. But I was
speaking of Shadynook and the fairies of that domain.
Never have I seen Belinda, or rather Belle-bouche, so
lovely, and I here disdainfully repel your ridiculous

calumny that she's in love with you, you great lump of
presumption and overweening self-conceit! Philippa
too was a pastoral queen—in silk and jewels—and around
them they had gathered together a troop of shepherds
from the adjoining grammar-school, called William and
Mary College, of which I am an aspiring bachelor, and
you were an ornament before your religious opinions
caught from Fauquier drove you away like a truant
school-boy. The shepherds were as usual very ridiculous,
and I had no opportunity to whisper so much as a single
word into my dear Belle-bouche's ear. Ah! how lovely
she looked! By heaven, I'll go to-morrow and request
her to designate some form of death for me to die—all
for her sake!”

With which words the forlorn Jacques gazed languidly
through the window.

At the same moment a bell was heard ringing in the
direction of the College; and yawning first luxuriously,
the young man rose.

“Lecture, by Jove!” he said.

“And you, unfortunate victim, must attend,” said
his companion.

“Yes. You remain here?”

“To the end.”

“Still resisting?”

“To the death!”

“Very well,” said Jacques, putting on his cocked hat,
which was ornamented with a magnificent feather. “I
half envy you; but duty calls—I must go.”

“If you see Ned Carter, or Tom Randolph of Tuckahoe,
tell them to come round.”

“To comfort you? Poor unfortunate prisoner!”

“No, most sapient Jacques: fortunately I do not need
comfort as you do.”

“I want comfort?”

“Yes; there you are sighing: that `heigho!' was
dreadful.”

“Scoffer!”

“No; I am your rival.”

“Very well; I warn you that I intend to push the
siege; take care of your interests.”

“I'm not afraid.”

“I am going to see Belle-bouche again to-morrow.

“Faith, I'll be there, then.”

“Good; war is opened then—the glove thrown?”

“War to the death! Good-by, publican!”

“Farewell, sinner!”

And with these words the melancholy Jacques departed.