prompt:
Chapter: Am Rhein

The above everyday events had occurred, and a few weeks had passed,
when on one fine morning, Parliament being over, the summer advanced,
and all the good company in London about to quit that city for their
annual tour in search of pleasure or health, the Batavier steamboat
left the Tower-stairs laden with a goodly company of English fugitives.
The quarter-deck awnings were up, and the benches and gangways crowded
with scores of rosy children, bustling nursemaids; ladies in the
prettiest pink bonnets and summer dresses; gentlemen in travelling caps
and linen-jackets, whose mustachios had just begun to sprout for the
ensuing tour; and stout trim old veterans with starched neckcloths and
neat-brushed hats, such as have invaded Europe any time since the
conclusion of the war, and carry the national Goddem into every city of
the Continent.  The congregation of hat-boxes, and Bramah desks, and
dressing-cases was prodigious.  There were jaunty young Cambridge-men
travelling with their tutor, and going for a reading excursion to
Nonnenwerth or Konigswinter; there were Irish gentlemen, with the most
dashing whiskers and jewellery, talking about horses incessantly, and
prodigiously polite to the young ladies on board, whom, on the
contrary, the Cambridge lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided with
maiden coyness; there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems and
Wiesbaden and a course of waters to clear off the dinners of the
season, and a little roulette and trente-et-quarante to keep the
excitement going; there was old Methuselah, who had married his young
wife, with Captain Papillon of the Guards holding her parasol and
guide-books; there was young May who was carrying off his bride on a
pleasure tour (Mrs. Winter that was, and who had been at school with
May's grandmother); there was Sir John and my Lady with a dozen
children, and corresponding nursemaids; and the great grandee Bareacres
family that sat by themselves near the wheel, stared at everybody, and
spoke to no one.  Their carriages, emblazoned with coronets and heaped
with shining imperials, were on the foredeck, locked in with a dozen
more such vehicles:  it was difficult to pass in and out amongst them;
and the poor inmates of the fore-cabin had scarcely any space for
locomotion.  These consisted of a few magnificently attired gentlemen
from Houndsditch, who brought their own provisions, and could have
bought half the gay people in the grand saloon; a few honest fellows
with mustachios and portfolios, who set to sketching before they had
been half an hour on board; one or two French femmes de chambre who
began to be dreadfully ill by the time the boat had passed Greenwich; a
groom or two who lounged in the neighbourhood of the horse-boxes under
their charge, or leaned over the side by the paddle-wheels, and talked
about who was good for the Leger, and what they stood to win or lose
for the Goodwood cup.

All the couriers, when they had done plunging about the ship and had
settled their various masters in the cabins or on the deck, congregated
together and began to chatter and smoke; the Hebrew gentlemen joining
them and looking at the carriages.  There was Sir John's great carriage
that would hold thirteen people; my Lord Methuselah's carriage, my Lord
Bareacres' chariot, britzska, and fourgon, that anybody might pay for
who liked. It was a wonder how my Lord got the ready money to pay for
the expenses of the journey. The Hebrew gentlemen knew how he got it.
They knew what money his Lordship had in his pocket at that instant,
and what interest he paid for it, and who gave it him.  Finally there
was a very neat, handsome travelling carriage, about which the
gentlemen speculated.

"A qui cette voiture la?" said one gentleman-courier with a large
morocco money-bag and ear-rings to another with ear-rings and a large
morocco money-bag.

"C'est a Kirsch je bense--je l'ai vu toute a l'heure--qui brenoit des
sangviches dans la voiture," said the courier in a fine German French.

Kirsch emerging presently from the neighbourhood of the hold, where he
had been bellowing instructions intermingled with polyglot oaths to the
ship's men engaged in secreting the passengers' luggage, came to give
an account of himself to his brother interpreters.  He informed them
that the carriage belonged to a Nabob from Calcutta and Jamaica
enormously rich, and with whom he was engaged to travel; and at this
moment a young gentleman who had been warned off the bridge between the
paddle-boxes, and who had dropped thence on to the roof of Lord
Methuselah's carriage, from which he made his way over other carriages
and imperials until he had clambered on to his own, descended thence
and through the window into the body of the carriage, to the applause
of the couriers looking on.

"Nous allons avoir une belle traversee, Monsieur George," said the
courier with a grin, as he lifted his gold-laced cap.

"D---- your French," said the young gentleman, "where's the biscuits,
ay?" Whereupon Kirsch answered him in the English language or in such
an imitation of it as he could command--for though he was familiar with
all languages, Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one, and
spoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness.

The imperious young gentleman who gobbled the biscuits (and indeed it
was time to refresh himself, for he had breakfasted at Richmond full
three hours before) was our young friend George Osborne.  Uncle Jos and
his mamma were on the quarter-deck with a gentleman of whom they used
to see a good deal, and the four were about to make a summer tour.

Jos was seated at that moment on deck under the awning, and pretty
nearly opposite to the Earl of Bareacres and his family, whose
proceedings absorbed the Bengalee almost entirely.  Both the noble
couple looked rather younger than in the eventful year '15, when Jos
remembered to have seen them at Brussels (indeed, he always gave out in
India that he was intimately acquainted with them).  Lady Bareacres'
hair, which was then dark, was now a beautiful golden auburn, whereas
Lord Bareacres' whiskers, formerly red, were at present of a rich black
with purple and green reflections in the light.  But changed as they
were, the movements of the noble pair occupied Jos's mind entirely.
The presence of a Lord fascinated him, and he could look at nothing
else.

"Those people seem to interest you a good deal," said Dobbin, laughing
and watching him.  Amelia too laughed. She was in a straw bonnet with
black ribbons, and otherwise dressed in mourning, but the little bustle
and holiday of the journey pleased and excited her, and she looked
particularly happy.

"What a heavenly day!" Emmy said and added, with great originality, "I
hope we shall have a calm passage."

Jos waved his hand, scornfully glancing at the same time under his
eyelids at the great folks opposite.  "If you had made the voyages we
have," he said, "you wouldn't much care about the weather." But
nevertheless, traveller as he was, he passed the night direfully sick
in his carriage, where his courier tended him with brandy-and-water
and every luxury.

In due time this happy party landed at the quays of Rotterdam, whence
they were transported by another steamer to the city of Cologne.  Here
the carriage and the family took to the shore, and Jos was not a little
gratified to see his arrival announced in the Cologne newspapers as
"Herr Graf Lord von Sedley nebst Begleitung aus London." He had his
court dress with him; he had insisted that Dobbin should bring his
regimental paraphernalia; he announced that it was his intention to be
presented at some foreign courts, and pay his respects to the
Sovereigns of the countries which he honoured with a visit.

Wherever the party stopped, and an opportunity was offered, Mr. Jos
left his own card and the Major's upon "Our Minister." It was with
great difficulty that he could be restrained from putting on his cocked
hat and tights to wait upon the English consul at the Free City of
Judenstadt, when that hospitable functionary asked our travellers to
dinner.  He kept a journal of his voyage and noted elaborately the
defects or excellences of the various inns at which he put up, and of
the wines and dishes of which he partook.

As for Emmy, she was very happy and pleased.  Dobbin used to carry
about for her her stool and sketch-book, and admired the drawings of
the good-natured little artist as they never had been admired before.
She sat upon steamers' decks and drew crags and castles, or she mounted
upon donkeys and ascended to ancient robber-towers, attended by her two
aides-de-camp, Georgy and Dobbin.  She laughed, and the Major did too,
at his droll figure on donkey-back, with his long legs touching the
ground.  He was the interpreter for the party; having a good military
knowledge of the German language, and he and the delighted George
fought the campaigns of the Rhine and the Palatinate.  In the course of
a few weeks, and by assiduously conversing with Herr Kirsch on the box
of the carriage, Georgy made prodigious advance in the knowledge of
High Dutch, and could talk to hotel waiters and postilions in a way
that charmed his mother and amused his guardian.

Mr. Jos did not much engage in the afternoon excursions of his
fellow-travellers.  He slept a good deal after dinner, or basked in the
arbours of the pleasant inn-gardens.  Pleasant Rhine gardens! Fair
scenes of peace and sunshine--noble purple mountains, whose crests are
reflected in the magnificent stream--who has ever seen you that has not
a grateful memory of those scenes of friendly repose and beauty? To lay
down the pen and even to think of that beautiful Rhineland makes one
happy.  At this time of summer evening, the cows are trooping down from
the hills, lowing and with their bells tinkling, to the old town, with
its old moats, and gates, and spires, and chestnut-trees, with long
blue shadows stretching over the grass; the sky and the river below
flame in crimson and gold; and the moon is already out, looking pale
towards the sunset.  The sun sinks behind the great castle-crested
mountains, the night falls suddenly, the river grows darker and darker,
lights quiver in it from the windows in the old ramparts, and twinkle
peacefully in the villages under the hills on the opposite shore.

So Jos used to go to sleep a good deal with his bandanna over his face
and be very comfortable, and read all the English news, and every word
of Galignani's admirable newspaper (may the blessings of all Englishmen
who have ever been abroad rest on the founders and proprietors of that
piratical print!  ) and whether he woke or slept, his friends did not
very much miss him.  Yes, they were very happy.  They went to the opera
often of evenings--to those snug, unassuming, dear old operas in the
German towns, where the noblesse sits and cries, and knits stockings on
the one side, over against the bourgeoisie on the other; and His
Transparency the Duke and his Transparent family, all very fat and
good-natured, come and occupy the great box in the middle; and the pit
is full of the most elegant slim-waisted officers with straw-coloured
mustachios, and twopence a day on full pay. Here it was that Emmy found
her delight, and was introduced for the first time to the wonders of
Mozart and Cimarosa. The Major's musical taste has been before alluded
to, and his performances on the flute commended. But perhaps the chief
pleasure he had in these operas was in watching Emmy's rapture while
listening to them. A new world of love and beauty broke upon her when
she was introduced to those divine compositions; this lady had the
keenest and finest sensibility, and how could she be indifferent when
she heard Mozart? The tender parts of "Don Juan" awakened in her
raptures so exquisite that she would ask herself when she went to say
her prayers of a night whether it was not wicked to feel so much
delight as that with which "Vedrai Carino" and "Batti Batti" filled her
gentle little bosom? But the Major, whom she consulted upon this head,
as her theological adviser (and who himself had a pious and reverent
soul), said that for his part, every beauty of art or nature made him
thankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to be had in listening
to fine music, as in looking at the stars in the sky, or at a beautiful
landscape or picture, was a benefit for which we might thank Heaven as
sincerely as for any other worldly blessing.  And in reply to some
faint objections of Mrs. Amelia's (taken from certain theological works
like the Washerwoman of Finchley Common and others of that school, with
which Mrs. Osborne had been furnished during her life at Brompton) he
told her an Eastern fable of the Owl who thought that the sunshine was
unbearable for the eyes and that the Nightingale was a most overrated
bird.  "It is one's nature to sing and the other's to hoot," he said,
laughing, "and with such a sweet voice as you have yourself, you must
belong to the Bulbul faction."

I like to dwell upon this period of her life and to think that she was
cheerful and happy.  You see, she has not had too much of that sort of
existence as yet, and has not fallen in the way of means to educate her
tastes or her intelligence.  She has been domineered over hitherto by
vulgar intellects.  It is the lot of many a woman. And as every one of
the dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes for
folly in their charitable judgments; and gentleness for dulness; and
silence--which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling
folks, and tacit protestantism--above all, finds no mercy at the hands
of the female Inquisition. Thus, my dear and civilized reader, if you
and I were to find ourselves this evening in a society of greengrocers,
let us say, it is probable that our conversation would not be
brilliant; if, on the other hand, a greengrocer should find himself at
your refined and polite tea-table, where everybody was saying witty
things, and everybody of fashion and repute tearing her friends to
pieces in the most delightful manner, it is possible that the stranger
would not be very talkative and by no means interesting or interested.

And it must be remembered that this poor lady had never met a gentleman
in her life until this present moment.  Perhaps these are rarer
personages than some of us think for.  Which of us can point out many
such in his circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is
constant, and not only constant in its kind but elevated in its degree;
whose want of meanness makes them simple; who can look the world
honestly in the face with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the
small? We all know a hundred whose coats are very well made, and a
score who have excellent manners, and one or two happy beings who are
what they call in the inner circles, and have shot into the very centre
and bull's-eye of the fashion; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a
little scrap of paper and each make out his list.

My friend the Major I write, without any doubt, in mine.  He had very
long legs, a yellow face, and a slight lisp, which at first was rather
ridiculous.  But his thoughts were just, his brains were fairly good,
his life was honest and pure, and his heart warm and humble.  He
certainly had very large hands and feet, which the two George Osbornes
used to caricature and laugh at; and their jeers and laughter perhaps
led poor little Emmy astray as to his worth.  But have we not all been
misled about our heroes and changed our opinions a hundred times? Emmy,
in this happy time, found that hers underwent a very great change in
respect of the merits of the Major.

Perhaps it was the happiest time of both their lives, indeed, if they
did but know it--and who does? Which of us can point out and say that
was the culmination--that was the summit of human joy? But at all
events, this couple were very decently contented, and enjoyed as
pleasant a summer tour as any pair that left England that year. Georgy
was always present at the play, but it was the Major who put Emmy's
shawl on after the entertainment; and in the walks and excursions the
young lad would be on ahead, and up a tower-stair or a tree, whilst the
soberer couple were below, the Major smoking his cigar with great
placidity and constancy, whilst Emmy sketched the site or the ruin.  It
was on this very tour that I, the present writer of a history of which
every word is true, had the pleasure to see them first and to make
their acquaintance.

It was at the little comfortable Ducal town of Pumpernickel (that very
place where Sir Pitt Crawley had been so distinguished as an attache;
but that was in early early days, and before the news of the Battle of
Austerlitz sent all the English diplomatists in Germany to the right
about) that I first saw Colonel Dobbin and his party.  They had arrived
with the carriage and courier at the Erbprinz Hotel, the best of the
town, and the whole party dined at the table d'hote.  Everybody
remarked the majesty of Jos and the knowing way in which he sipped, or
rather sucked, the Johannisberger, which he ordered for dinner.  The
little boy, too, we observed, had a famous appetite, and consumed
schinken, and braten, and kartoffeln, and cranberry jam, and salad, and
pudding, and roast fowls, and sweetmeats, with a gallantry that did
honour to his nation.  After about fifteen dishes, he concluded the
repast with dessert, some of which he even carried out of doors, for
some young gentlemen at table, amused with his coolness and gallant
free-and-easy manner, induced him to pocket a handful of macaroons,
which he discussed on his way to the theatre, whither everybody went in
the cheery social little German place. The lady in black, the boy's
mamma, laughed and blushed, and looked exceedingly pleased and shy as
the dinner went on, and at the various feats and instances of
espieglerie on the part of her son.  The Colonel--for so he became very
soon afterwards--I remember joked the boy with a great deal of grave
fun, pointing out dishes which he hadn't tried, and entreating him not
to baulk his appetite, but to have a second supply of this or that.

It was what they call a gast-rolle night at the Royal Grand Ducal
Pumpernickelisch Hof--or Court theatre--and Madame Schroeder Devrient,
then in the bloom of her beauty and genius, performed the part of the
heroine in the wonderful opera of Fidelio.  From our places in the
stalls we could see our four friends of the table d'hote in the loge
which Schwendler of the Erbprinz kept for his best guests, and I could
not help remarking the effect which the magnificent actress and music
produced upon Mrs. Osborne, for so we heard the stout gentleman in the
mustachios call her.  During the astonishing Chorus of the Prisoners,
over which the delightful voice of the actress rose and soared in the
most ravishing harmony, the English lady's face wore such an expression
of wonder and delight that it struck even little Fipps, the blase
attache, who drawled out, as he fixed his glass upon her, "Gayd, it
really does one good to see a woman caypable of that stayt of
excaytement." And in the Prison Scene, where Fidelio, rushing to her
husband, cries, "Nichts, nichts, mein Florestan," she fairly lost
herself and covered her face with her handkerchief.  Every woman in the
house was snivelling at the time, but I suppose it was because it was
predestined that I was to write this particular lady's memoirs that I
remarked her.

The next day they gave another piece of Beethoven, Die Schlacht bei
Vittoria.  Malbrook is introduced at the beginning of the performance,
as indicative of the brisk advance of the French army. Then come drums,
trumpets, thunders of artillery, and groans of the dying, and at last,
in a grand triumphal swell, "God Save the King" is performed.

There may have been a score of Englishmen in the house, but at the
burst of that beloved and well-known music, every one of them, we young
fellows in the stalls, Sir John and Lady Bullminster (who had taken a
house at Pumpernickel for the education of their nine children), the
fat gentleman with the mustachios, the long Major in white duck
trousers, and the lady with the little boy upon whom he was so sweet,
even Kirsch, the courier in the gallery, stood bolt upright in their
places and proclaimed themselves to be members of the dear old British
nation.  As for Tapeworm, the Charge d'Affaires, he rose up in his box
and bowed and simpered, as if he would represent the whole empire.
Tapeworm was nephew and heir of old Marshal Tiptoff, who has been
introduced in this story as General Tiptoff, just before Waterloo, who
was Colonel of the --th regiment in which Major Dobbin served, and who
died in this year full of honours, and of an aspic of plovers' eggs;
when the regiment was graciously given by his Majesty to Colonel Sir
Michael O'Dowd, K.C.B.  who had commanded it in many glorious fields.

Tapeworm must have met with Colonel Dobbin at the house of the
Colonel's Colonel, the Marshal, for he recognized him on this night at
the theatre, and with the utmost condescension, his Majesty's minister
came over from his own box and publicly shook hands with his new-found
friend.

"Look at that infernal sly-boots of a Tapeworm," Fipps whispered,
examining his chief from the stalls. "Wherever there's a pretty woman
he always twists himself in." And I wonder what were diplomatists made
for but for that?

"Have I the honour of addressing myself to Mrs. Dobbin?" asked the
Secretary with a most insinuating grin.

Georgy burst out laughing and said, "By Jove, that was a good 'un."
Emmy and the Major blushed:  we saw them from the stalls.

"This lady is Mrs. George Osborne," said the Major, "and this is her
brother, Mr. Sedley, a distinguished officer of the Bengal Civil
Service:  permit me to introduce him to your lordship."

My lord nearly sent Jos off his legs with the most fascinating smile.
"Are you going to stop in Pumpernickel?" he said.  "It is a dull place,
but we want some nice people, and we would try and make it SO agreeable
to you.  Mr.--Ahum--Mrs.--Oho.  I shall do myself the honour of calling
upon you to-morrow at your inn." And he went away with a Parthian grin
and glance which he thought must finish Mrs. Osborne completely.

The performance over, the young fellows lounged about the lobbies, and
we saw the society take its departure. The Duchess Dowager went off in
her jingling old coach, attended by two faithful and withered old maids
of honour, and a little snuffy spindle-shanked gentleman in waiting, in
a brown jasey and a green coat covered with orders--of which the star
and the grand yellow cordon of the order of St. Michael of Pumpernickel
were most conspicuous.  The drums rolled, the guards saluted, and the
old carriage drove away.

Then came his Transparency the Duke and Transparent family, with his
great officers of state and household.  He bowed serenely to everybody.
And amid the saluting of the guards and the flaring of the torches of
the running footmen, clad in scarlet, the Transparent carriages drove
away to the old Ducal schloss, with its towers and pinacles standing on
the schlossberg.  Everybody in Pumpernickel knew everybody.  No sooner
was a foreigner seen there than the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or
some other great or small officer of state, went round to the Erbprinz
and found out the name of the new arrival.

We watched them, too, out of the theatre.  Tapeworm had just walked
off, enveloped in his cloak, with which his gigantic chasseur was
always in attendance, and looking as much as possible like Don Juan.
The Prime Minister's lady had just squeezed herself into her sedan, and
her daughter, the charming Ida, had put on her calash and clogs; when
the English party came out, the boy yawning drearily, the Major taking
great pains in keeping the shawl over Mrs. Osborne's head, and Mr.
Sedley looking grand, with a crush opera-hat on one side of his head
and his hand in the stomach of a voluminous white waistcoat.  We took
off our hats to our acquaintances of the table d'hote, and the lady, in
return, presented us with a little smile and a curtsey, for which
everybody might be thankful.

The carriage from the inn, under the superintendence of the bustling
Mr. Kirsch, was in waiting to convey the party; but the fat man said he
would walk and smoke his cigar on his way homewards, so the other
three, with nods and smiles to us, went without Mr. Sedley, Kirsch,
with the cigar case, following in his master's wake.

We all walked together and talked to the stout gentleman about the
agremens of the place.  It was very agreeable for the English. There
were shooting-parties and battues; there was a plenty of balls and
entertainments at the hospitable Court; the society was generally good;
the theatre excellent; and the living cheap.

"And our Minister seems a most delightful and affable person," our new
friend said.  "With such a representative, and--and a good medical man,
I can fancy the place to be most eligible.  Good-night, gentlemen." And
Jos creaked up the stairs to bedward, followed by Kirsch with a
flambeau.  We rather hoped that nice-looking woman would be induced to
stay some time in the town.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: A few weeks later it's the season for the British to go abroad. They apparently do this en masse every year at a particular time. On the ship Jos acts like a big-time traveler but gets very sick when the actual journey starts. They see the Bareacres family, who sit alone and talk to no one on board. George Jr. is having fun, running around, eating a ton of food, and generally acting like a normal little kid for once. After they land, Jos is obsessed with meeting the king and queen of every country they come to - which apparently is reasonably easy at this time for someone of his rank. Amelia loves it there. She walks around with Dobbin, who carries a little stool and sketching things for her. He plays soldiers with George Jr. While they are outside enjoying the weather and nature, Jos sleeps a lot. Dobbin takes Amelia to the opera for the first time in her life. She takes to it like a duck to water and starts to finally become at least a little bit educated and cultured. The narrator reveals that Dobbin a true gentleman, the only one in the novel . Finally they get to Pumpernickel, a town in Germany. It's sleepy, quiet, lovely, and adorable. Suddenly the narrator turns into an actual person and tells us that he met Dobbin, Amelia, Jos, and George Jr. in Pumpernickel while they were there. What on earth? It's a jarring thing, this narrator switching. In any case, they like the town so much that they decide to stay there for a while before continuing their trip.


prompt:
Chapter: In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance

Such polite behaviour as that of Lord Tapeworm did not fail to have the
most favourable effect upon Mr. Sedley's mind, and the very next
morning, at breakfast, he pronounced his opinion that Pumpernickel was
the pleasantest little place of any which he had visited on their tour.
Jos's motives and artifices were not very difficult of comprehension,
and Dobbin laughed in his sleeve, like a hypocrite as he was, when he
found, by the knowing air of the civilian and the offhand manner in
which the latter talked about Tapeworm Castle and the other members of
the family, that Jos had been up already in the morning, consulting his
travelling Peerage.  Yes, he had seen the Right Honourable the Earl of
Bagwig, his lordship's father; he was sure he had, he had met him
at--at the Levee--didn't Dob remember? and when the Diplomatist called
on the party, faithful to his promise, Jos received him with such a
salute and honours as were seldom accorded to the little Envoy.  He
winked at Kirsch on his Excellency's arrival, and that emissary,
instructed before-hand, went out and superintended an entertainment of
cold meats, jellies, and other delicacies, brought in upon trays, and
of which Mr. Jos absolutely insisted that his noble guest should
partake.

Tapeworm, so long as he could have an opportunity of admiring the
bright eyes of Mrs. Osborne (whose freshness of complexion bore
daylight remarkably well) was not ill pleased to accept any invitation
to stay in Mr. Sedley's lodgings; he put one or two dexterous questions
to him about India and the dancing-girls there; asked Amelia about that
beautiful boy who had been with her; and complimented the astonished
little woman upon the prodigious sensation which she had made in the
house; and tried to fascinate Dobbin by talking of the late war and the
exploits of the Pumpernickel contingent under the command of the
Hereditary Prince, now Duke of Pumpernickel.

Lord Tapeworm inherited no little portion of the family gallantry, and
it was his happy belief that almost every woman upon whom he himself
cast friendly eyes was in love with him.  He left Emmy under the
persuasion that she was slain by his wit and attractions and went home
to his lodgings to write a pretty little note to her.  She was not
fascinated, only puzzled, by his grinning, his simpering, his scented
cambric handkerchief, and his high-heeled lacquered boots.  She did not
understand one-half the compliments which he paid; she had never, in
her small experience of mankind, met a professional ladies' man as yet,
and looked upon my lord as something curious rather than pleasant; and
if she did not admire, certainly wondered at him.  Jos, on the
contrary, was delighted. "How very affable his Lordship is," he said;
"How very kind of his Lordship to say he would send his medical man!
Kirsch, you will carry our cards to the Count de Schlusselback
directly; the Major and I will have the greatest pleasure in paying our
respects at Court as soon as possible.  Put out my uniform,
Kirsch--both our uniforms.  It is a mark of politeness which every
English gentleman ought to show to the countries which he visits to pay
his respects to the sovereigns of those countries as to the
representatives of his own."

When Tapeworm's doctor came, Doctor von Glauber, Body Physician to
H.S.H.  the Duke, he speedily convinced Jos that the Pumpernickel
mineral springs and the Doctor's particular treatment would infallibly
restore the Bengalee to youth and slimness.  "Dere came here last
year," he said, "Sheneral Bulkeley, an English Sheneral, tvice so pic
as you, sir.  I sent him back qvite tin after tree months, and he
danced vid Baroness Glauber at the end of two."

Jos's mind was made up; the springs, the Doctor, the Court, and the
Charge d'Affaires convinced him, and he proposed to spend the autumn in
these delightful quarters.  And punctual to his word, on the next day
the Charge d'Affaires presented Jos and the Major to Victor Aurelius
XVII, being conducted to their audience with that sovereign by the
Count de Schlusselback, Marshal of the Court.

They were straightway invited to dinner at Court, and their intention
of staying in the town being announced, the politest ladies of the
whole town instantly called upon Mrs. Osborne; and as not one of these,
however poor they might be, was under the rank of a Baroness, Jos's
delight was beyond expression.  He wrote off to Chutney at the Club to
say that the Service was highly appreciated in Germany, that he was
going to show his friend, the Count de Schlusselback, how to stick a
pig in the Indian fashion, and that his august friends, the Duke and
Duchess, were everything that was kind and civil.

Emmy, too, was presented to the august family, and as mourning is not
admitted in Court on certain days, she appeared in a pink crape dress
with a diamond ornament in the corsage, presented to her by her
brother, and she looked so pretty in this costume that the Duke and
Court (putting out of the question the Major, who had scarcely ever
seen her before in an evening dress, and vowed that she did not look
five-and-twenty) all admired her excessively.

In this dress she walked a Polonaise with Major Dobbin at a Court ball,
in which easy dance Mr. Jos had the honour of leading out the Countess
of Schlusselback, an old lady with a hump back, but with sixteen good
quarters of nobility and related to half the royal houses of Germany.

Pumpernickel stands in the midst of a happy valley through which
sparkles--to mingle with the Rhine somewhere, but I have not the map at
hand to say exactly at what point--the fertilizing stream of the Pump.
In some places the river is big enough to support a ferry-boat, in
others to turn a mill; in Pumpernickel itself, the last Transparency
but three, the great and renowned Victor Aurelius XIV built a
magnificent bridge, on which his own statue rises, surrounded by
water-nymphs and emblems of victory, peace, and plenty; he has his foot
on the neck of a prostrate Turk--history says he engaged and ran a
Janissary through the body at the relief of Vienna by Sobieski--but,
quite undisturbed by the agonies of that prostrate Mahometan, who
writhes at his feet in the most ghastly manner, the Prince smiles
blandly and points with his truncheon in the direction of the Aurelius
Platz, where he began to erect a new palace that would have been the
wonder of his age had the great-souled Prince but had funds to
complete it.  But the completion of Monplaisir (Monblaisir the honest
German folks call it) was stopped for lack of ready money, and it and
its park and garden are now in rather a faded condition, and not more
than ten times big enough to accommodate the Court of the reigning
Sovereign.

The gardens were arranged to emulate those of Versailles, and amidst
the terraces and groves there are some huge allegorical waterworks
still, which spout and froth stupendously upon fete-days, and frighten
one with their enormous aquatic insurrections.  There is the
Trophonius' cave in which, by some artifice, the leaden Tritons are
made not only to spout water, but to play the most dreadful groans out
of their lead conchs--there is the nymphbath and the Niagara cataract,
which the people of the neighbourhood admire beyond expression, when
they come to the yearly fair at the opening of the Chamber, or to the
fetes with which the happy little nation still celebrates the birthdays
and marriage-days of its princely governors.

Then from all the towns of the Duchy, which stretches for nearly ten
mile--from Bolkum, which lies on its western frontier bidding defiance
to Prussia, from Grogwitz, where the Prince has a hunting-lodge, and
where his dominions are separated by the Pump River from those of the
neighbouring Prince of Potzenthal; from all the little villages, which
besides these three great cities, dot over the happy principality--from
the farms and the mills along the Pump come troops of people in red
petticoats and velvet head-dresses, or with three-cornered hats and
pipes in their mouths, who flock to the Residenz and share in the
pleasures of the fair and the festivities there.  Then the theatre is
open for nothing, then the waters of Monblaisir begin to play (it is
lucky that there is company to behold them, for one would be afraid to
see them alone)--then there come mountebanks and riding troops (the way
in which his Transparency was fascinated by one of the horse-riders is
well known, and it is believed that La Petite Vivandiere, as she was
called, was a spy in the French interest), and the delighted people are
permitted to march through room after room of the Grand Ducal palace
and admire the slippery floor, the rich hangings, and the spittoons at
the doors of all the innumerable chambers.  There is one Pavilion at
Monblaisir which Aurelius Victor XV had arranged--a great Prince but
too fond of pleasure--and which I am told is a perfect wonder of
licentious elegance. It is painted with the story of Bacchus and
Ariadne, and the table works in and out of the room by means of a
windlass, so that the company was served without any intervention of
domestics.  But the place was shut up by Barbara, Aurelius XV's widow,
a severe and devout Princess of the House of Bolkum and Regent of the
Duchy during her son's glorious minority, and after the death of her
husband, cut off in the pride of his pleasures.

The theatre of Pumpernickel is known and famous in that quarter of
Germany.  It languished a little when the present Duke in his youth
insisted upon having his own operas played there, and it is said one
day, in a fury, from his place in the orchestra, when he attended a
rehearsal, broke a bassoon on the head of the Chapel Master, who was
conducting, and led too slow; and during which time the Duchess Sophia
wrote domestic comedies, which must have been very dreary to witness.
But the Prince executes his music in private now, and the Duchess only
gives away her plays to the foreigners of distinction who visit her
kind little Court.

It is conducted with no small comfort and splendour. When there are
balls, though there may be four hundred people at supper, there is a
servant in scarlet and lace to attend upon every four, and every one is
served on silver.  There are festivals and entertainments going
continually on, and the Duke has his chamberlains and equerries, and
the Duchess her mistress of the wardrobe and ladies of honour, just
like any other and more potent potentates.

The Constitution is or was a moderate despotism, tempered by a Chamber
that might or might not be elected.  I never certainly could hear of
its sitting in my time at Pumpernickel.  The Prime Minister had
lodgings in a second floor, and the Foreign Secretary occupied the
comfortable lodgings over Zwieback's Conditorey.  The army consisted of
a magnificent band that also did duty on the stage, where it was quite
pleasant to see the worthy fellows marching in Turkish dresses with
rouge on and wooden scimitars, or as Roman warriors with ophicleides
and trombones--to see them again, I say, at night, after one had
listened to them all the morning in the Aurelius Platz, where they
performed opposite the cafe where we breakfasted.  Besides the band,
there was a rich and numerous staff of officers, and, I believe, a few
men.  Besides the regular sentries, three or four men, habited as
hussars, used to do duty at the Palace, but I never saw them on
horseback, and au fait, what was the use of cavalry in a time of
profound peace?--and whither the deuce should the hussars ride?

Everybody--everybody that was noble of course, for as for the bourgeois
we could not quite be expected to take notice of THEM--visited his
neighbour.  H. E. Madame de Burst received once a week, H. E. Madame de
Schnurrbart had her night--the theatre was open twice a week, the Court
graciously received once, so that a man's life might in fact be a
perfect round of pleasure in the unpretending Pumpernickel way.

That there were feuds in the place, no one can deny. Politics ran very
high at Pumpernickel, and parties were very bitter.  There was the
Strumpff faction and the Lederlung party, the one supported by our
envoy and the other by the French Charge d'Affaires, M. de Macabau.
Indeed it sufficed for our Minister to stand up for Madame Strumpff,
who was clearly the greater singer of the two, and had three more notes
in her voice than Madame Lederlung her rival--it sufficed, I say, for
our Minister to advance any opinion to have it instantly contradicted
by the French diplomatist.

Everybody in the town was ranged in one or other of these factions. The
Lederlung was a prettyish little creature certainly, and her voice
(what there was of it) was very sweet, and there is no doubt that the
Strumpff was not in her first youth and beauty, and certainly too
stout; when she came on in the last scene of the Sonnambula, for
instance, in her night-chemise with a lamp in her hand, and had to go
out of the window, and pass over the plank of the mill, it was all she
could do to squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend and
creak again under her weight--but how she poured out the finale of the
opera!  and with what a burst of feeling she rushed into Elvino's
arms--almost fit to smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung--but a
truce to this gossip--the fact is that these two women were the two
flags of the French and the English party at Pumpernickel, and the
society was divided in its allegiance to those two great nations.

We had on our side the Home Minister, the Master of the Horse, the
Duke's Private Secretary, and the Prince's Tutor; whereas of the French
party were the Foreign Minister, the Commander-in-Chief's Lady, who had
served under Napoleon, and the Hof-Marschall and his wife, who was glad
enough to get the fashions from Paris, and always had them and her caps
by M. de Macabau's courier.  The Secretary of his Chancery was little
Grignac, a young fellow, as malicious as Satan, and who made
caricatures of Tapeworm in all the albums of the place.

Their headquarters and table d'hote were established at the Pariser
Hof, the other inn of the town; and though, of course, these gentlemen
were obliged to be civil in public, yet they cut at each other with
epigrams that were as sharp as razors, as I have seen a couple of
wrestlers in Devonshire, lashing at each other's shins and never
showing their agony upon a muscle of their faces.  Neither Tapeworm nor
Macabau ever sent home a dispatch to his government without a most
savage series of attacks upon his rival.  For instance, on our side we
would write, "The interests of Great Britain in this place, and
throughout the whole of Germany, are perilled by the continuance in
office of the present French envoy; this man is of a character so
infamous that he will stick at no falsehood, or hesitate at no crime,
to attain his ends.  He poisons the mind of the Court against the
English minister, represents the conduct of Great Britain in the most
odious and atrocious light, and is unhappily backed by a minister whose
ignorance and necessities are as notorious as his influence is fatal."
On their side they would say, "M. de Tapeworm continues his system of
stupid insular arrogance and vulgar falsehood against the greatest
nation in the world.  Yesterday he was heard to speak lightly of Her
Royal Highness Madame the Duchess of Berri; on a former occasion he
insulted the heroic Duke of Angouleme and dared to insinuate that
H.R.H.  the Duke of Orleans was conspiring against the august throne of
the lilies.  His gold is prodigated in every direction which his stupid
menaces fail to frighten. By one and the other, he has won over
creatures of the Court here--and, in fine, Pumpernickel will not be
quiet, Germany tranquil, France respected, or Europe content until this
poisonous viper be crushed under heel":  and so on.  When one side or
the other had written any particularly spicy dispatch, news of it was
sure to slip out.

Before the winter was far advanced, it is actually on record that Emmy
took a night and received company with great propriety and modesty.
She had a French master, who complimented her upon the purity of her
accent and her facility of learning; the fact is she had learned long
ago and grounded herself subsequently in the grammar so as to be able
to teach it to George; and Madam Strumpff came to give her lessons in
singing, which she performed so well and with such a true voice that
the Major's windows, who had lodgings opposite under the Prime
Minister, were always open to hear the lesson. Some of the German
ladies, who are very sentimental and simple in their tastes, fell in
love with her and began to call her du at once.  These are trivial
details, but they relate to happy times.  The Major made himself
George's tutor and read Caesar and mathematics with him, and they had a
German master and rode out of evenings by the side of Emmy's
carriage--she was always too timid, and made a dreadful outcry at the
slightest disturbance on horse-back.  So she drove about with one of
her dear German friends, and Jos asleep on the back-seat of the
barouche.

He was becoming very sweet upon the Grafinn Fanny de Butterbrod, a very
gentle tender-hearted and unassuming young creature, a Canoness and
Countess in her own right, but with scarcely ten pounds per year to her
fortune, and Fanny for her part declared that to be Amelia's sister was
the greatest delight that Heaven could bestow on her, and Jos might
have put a Countess's shield and coronet by the side of his own arms on
his carriage and forks; when--when events occurred, and those grand
fetes given upon the marriage of the Hereditary Prince of Pumpernickel
with the lovely Princess Amelia of Humbourg-Schlippenschloppen took
place.

At this festival the magnificence displayed was such as had not been
known in the little German place since the days of the prodigal Victor
XIV.  All the neighbouring Princes, Princesses, and Grandees were
invited to the feast.  Beds rose to half a crown per night in
Pumpernickel, and the Army was exhausted in providing guards of honour
for the Highnesses, Serenities, and Excellencies who arrived from all
quarters.  The Princess was married by proxy, at her father's
residence, by the Count de Schlusselback.  Snuff-boxes were given away
in profusion (as we learned from the Court jeweller, who sold and
afterwards bought them again), and bushels of the Order of Saint
Michael of Pumpernickel were sent to the nobles of the Court, while
hampers of the cordons and decorations of the Wheel of St. Catherine of
Schlippenschloppen were brought to ours.  The French envoy got both.
"He is covered with ribbons like a prize cart-horse," Tapeworm said,
who was not allowed by the rules of his service to take any
decorations:  "Let him have the cordons; but with whom is the victory?"
The fact is, it was a triumph of British diplomacy, the French party
having proposed and tried their utmost to carry a marriage with a
Princess of the House of Potztausend-Donnerwetter, whom, as a matter
of course, we opposed.

Everybody was asked to the fetes of the marriage. Garlands and
triumphal arches were hung across the road to welcome the young bride.
The great Saint Michael's Fountain ran with uncommonly sour wine, while
that in the Artillery Place frothed with beer.  The great waters
played; and poles were put up in the park and gardens for the happy
peasantry, which they might climb at their leisure, carrying off
watches, silver forks, prize sausages hung with pink ribbon, &c., at
the top.  Georgy got one, wrenching it off, having swarmed up the pole
to the delight of the spectators, and sliding down with the rapidity of
a fall of water.  But it was for the glory's sake merely.  The boy gave
the sausage to a peasant, who had very nearly seized it, and stood at
the foot of the mast, blubbering, because he was unsuccessful.

At the French Chancellerie they had six more lampions in their
illumination than ours had; but our transparency, which represented the
young Couple advancing and Discord flying away, with the most ludicrous
likeness to the French Ambassador, beat the French picture hollow; and
I have no doubt got Tapeworm the advancement and the Cross of the Bath
which he subsequently attained.

Crowds of foreigners arrived for the fetes, and of English, of course.
Besides the Court balls, public balls were given at the Town Hall and
the Redoute, and in the former place there was a room for
trente-et-quarante and roulette established, for the week of the
festivities only, and by one of the great German companies from Ems or
Aix-la-Chapelle.  The officers or inhabitants of the town were not
allowed to play at these games, but strangers, peasants, ladies were
admitted, and any one who chose to lose or win money.

That little scapegrace Georgy Osborne amongst others, whose pockets
were always full of dollars and whose relations were away at the grand
festival of the Court, came to the Stadthaus Ball in company of his
uncle's courier, Mr. Kirsch, and having only peeped into a play-room at
Baden-Baden when he hung on Dobbin's arm, and where, of course, he was
not permitted to gamble, came eagerly to this part of the entertainment
and hankered round the tables where the croupiers and the punters were
at work.  Women were playing; they were masked, some of them; this
license was allowed in these wild times of carnival.

A woman with light hair, in a low dress by no means so fresh as it had
been, and with a black mask on, through the eyelets of which her eyes
twinkled strangely, was seated at one of the roulette-tables with a
card and a pin and a couple of florins before her.  As the croupier
called out the colour and number, she pricked on the card with great
care and regularity, and only ventured her money on the colours after
the red or black had come up a certain number of times.  It was strange
to look at her.

But in spite of her care and assiduity she guessed wrong and the last
two florins followed each other under the croupier's rake, as he cried
out with his inexorable voice the winning colour and number.  She gave
a sigh, a shrug with her shoulders, which were already too much out of
her gown, and dashing the pin through the card on to the table, sat
thrumming it for a while.  Then she looked round her and saw Georgy's
honest face staring at the scene.  The little scamp!  What business had
he to be there?

When she saw the boy, at whose face she looked hard through her shining
eyes and mask, she said, "Monsieur n'est pas joueur?"

"Non, Madame," said the boy; but she must have known, from his accent,
of what country he was, for she answered him with a slight foreign
tone.  "You have nevare played--will you do me a littl' favor?"

"What is it?" said Georgy, blushing again.  Mr. Kirsch was at work for
his part at the rouge et noir and did not see his young master.

"Play this for me, if you please; put it on any number, any number."
And she took from her bosom a purse, and out of it a gold piece, the
only coin there, and she put it into George's hand.  The boy laughed
and did as he was bid.

The number came up sure enough.  There is a power that arranges that,
they say, for beginners.

"Thank you," said she, pulling the money towards her, "thank you. What
is your name?"

"My name's Osborne," said Georgy, and was fingering in his own pockets
for dollars, and just about to make a trial, when the Major, in his
uniform, and Jos, en Marquis, from the Court ball, made their
appearance.  Other people, finding the entertainment stupid and
preferring the fun at the Stadthaus, had quitted the Palace ball
earlier; but it is probable the Major and Jos had gone home and found
the boy's absence, for the former instantly went up to him and, taking
him by the shoulder, pulled him briskly back from the place of
temptation.  Then, looking round the room, he saw Kirsch employed as we
have said, and going up to him, asked how he dared to bring Mr. George
to such a place.

"Laissez-moi tranquille," said Mr. Kirsch, very much excited by play
and wine.  "Il faut s'amuser, parbleu. Je ne suis pas au service de
Monsieur."

Seeing his condition the Major did not choose to argue with the man,
but contented himself with drawing away George and asking Jos if he
would come away.  He was standing close by the lady in the mask, who
was playing with pretty good luck now, and looking on much interested
at the game.

"Hadn't you better come, Jos," the Major said, "with George and me?"

"I'll stop and go home with that rascal, Kirsch," Jos said; and for the
same reason of modesty, which he thought ought to be preserved before
the boy, Dobbin did not care to remonstrate with Jos, but left him and
walked home with Georgy.

"Did you play?" asked the Major when they were out and on their way
home.

The boy said "No."

"Give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you never will."

"Why?" said the boy; "it seems very good fun." And, in a very eloquent
and impressive manner, the Major showed him why he shouldn't, and would
have enforced his precepts by the example of Georgy's own father, had
he liked to say anything that should reflect on the other's memory.
When he had housed him, he went to bed and saw his light, in the little
room outside of Amelia's, presently disappear.  Amelia's followed half
an hour afterwards.  I don't know what made the Major note it so
accurately.

Jos, however, remained behind over the play-table; he was no gambler,
but not averse to the little excitement of the sport now and then, and
he had some Napoleons chinking in the embroidered pockets of his court
waistcoat.  He put down one over the fair shoulder of the little
gambler before him, and they won.  She made a little movement to make
room for him by her side, and just took the skirt of her gown from a
vacant chair there.

"Come and give me good luck," she said, still in a foreign accent,
quite different from that frank and perfectly English "Thank you," with
which she had saluted Georgy's coup in her favour.  The portly
gentleman, looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him, sat
down; he muttered--"Ah, really, well now, God bless my soul. I'm very
fortunate; I'm sure to give you good fortune," and other words of
compliment and confusion. "Do you play much?" the foreign mask said.

"I put a Nap or two down," said Jos with a superb air, flinging down a
gold piece.

"Yes; ay nap after dinner," said the mask archly.  But Jos looking
frightened, she continued, in her pretty French accent, "You do not
play to win.  No more do I. I play to forget, but I cannot.  I cannot
forget old times, monsieur.  Your little nephew is the image of his
father; and you--you are not changed--but yes, you are. Everybody
changes, everybody forgets; nobody has any heart."

"Good God, who is it?" asked Jos in a flutter.

"Can't you guess, Joseph Sedley?" said the little woman in a sad voice,
and undoing her mask, she looked at him.  "You have forgotten me."

"Good heavens!  Mrs. Crawley!" gasped out Jos.

"Rebecca," said the other, putting her hand on his; but she followed
the game still, all the time she was looking at him.

"I am stopping at the Elephant," she continued.  "Ask for Madame de
Raudon.  I saw my dear Amelia to-day; how pretty she looked, and how
happy!  So do you! Everybody but me, who am wretched, Joseph Sedley."
And she put her money over from the red to the black, as if by a chance
movement of her hand, and while she was wiping her eyes with a
pocket-handkerchief fringed with torn lace.

The red came up again, and she lost the whole of that stake. "Come
away," she said.  "Come with me a little--we are old friends, are we
not, dear Mr. Sedley?"

And Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this time, followed his
master out into the moonlight, where the illuminations were winking out
and the transparency over our mission was scarcely visible.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Immediately Jos starts getting himself into the highest ranks of the little town's society. The British ambassador to the town, Lord Tapeworm, makes friends with everyone. He recommends a doctor whose miracle diet will make Jos skinny , flirts with Amelia , and gets them all invited to dinner at court with the local duke and duchess. When Amelia is all dressed up for going to court, her beauty knocks Dobbin's socks off. Pumpernickel is a lovely little place, with cute architecture, beautiful gardens, great theater, and a small but very fancy court. All the nobles and aristocrats that find themselves there together become friends because society is less formal abroad. The politics of the place revolve around which soprano is better at the opera and the blood feud between Tapeworm and his French counterpart. Everyone has a great time, and even Amelia finally finds some people to be friends with. Soon a royal wedding is going to be celebrated, so a big festival is set up. There's lots of food, of course, and games for the peasants. One of these games is climbing up a pole to get a prize at the top. George Jr. gets one of the prizes and gives it away to a peasant. The other fun thing is a gambling room that's set up for just one week. George Jr. goes there with Jos's valet and sees that there are women gambling there, not just men. Because this is kind of taboo, the women are allowed to wear masks. George Jr. sees one masked woman playing roulette and constantly losing until her last two coins are gone. She turns around and looks at George Jr. for a little while, then asks him in French whether he'd like to play. She gives him a gold coin from her purse and tells him to put it on any number. He does and immediately wins - beginner's luck. She thanks him and he tells her that his name is Osborne. He is about to talk to her more when Dobbin grabs him by the shoulder and drags him out of there. Who is the mystery woman, you're all wondering? OK, probably not. It's not really that much of a mystery. In any case, Dobbin yells at Jos and his valet for bringing George Jr. to the gambling room. But they are both pretty drunk and not worth arguing with, so Dobbin just takes George Jr. home and gives him a stern lecture about never ever gambling. Jos meanwhile comes to table where the woman is and sits down next to her. She suddenly tells him that his nephew is the spitting image of his father and that she has never forgotten him and their earlier times together. Jos kind of flips out and demands to know who she is. And it's...Becky. Of course. Becky tries one last bet and even cheats to move her piece from red to black, but loses again when red comes up. Then she tells Jos to find her at her hotel.


prompt:
Chapter: A Vagabond Chapter

We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's biography with that
lightness and delicacy which the world demands--the moral world, that
has, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable
repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name. There are things
we do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair, though we never speak of
them:  as the Ahrimanians worship the devil, but don't mention him:
and a polite public will no more bear to read an authentic description
of vice than a truly refined English or American female will permit the
word breeches to be pronounced in her chaste hearing.  And yet, madam,
both are walking the world before our faces every day, without much
shocking us.  If you were to blush every time they went by, what
complexions you would have!  It is only when their naughty names are
called out that your modesty has any occasion to show alarm or sense of
outrage, and it has been the wish of the present writer, all through
this story, deferentially to submit to the fashion at present
prevailing, and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a light,
easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be
offended.  I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly some
vices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and
inoffensive manner.  In describing this Siren, singing and smiling,
coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers
all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the
monster's hideous tail above water? No!  Those who like may peep down
under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and
twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or
curling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has not
everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most
squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however,
the Siren disappears and dives below, down among the dead men, the
water of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour lost to look
into it ever so curiously.  They look pretty enough when they sit upon
a rock, twanging their harps and combing their hair, and sing, and
beckon to you to come and hold the looking-glass; but when they sink
into their native element, depend on it, those mermaids are about no
good, and we had best not examine the fiendish marine cannibals,
revelling and feasting on their wretched pickled victims.  And so, when
Becky is out of the way, be sure that she is not particularly well
employed, and that the less that is said about her doings is in fact
the better.

If we were to give a full account of her proceedings during a couple of
years that followed after the Curzon Street catastrophe, there might be
some reason for people to say this book was improper.  The actions of
very vain, heartless, pleasure-seeking people are very often improper
(as are many of yours, my friend with the grave face and spotless
reputation--but that is merely by the way); and what are those of a
woman without faith--or love--or character? And I am inclined to think
that there was a period in Mrs Becky's life when she was seized, not by
remorse, but by a kind of despair, and absolutely neglected her person
and did not even care for her reputation.

This abattement and degradation did not take place all at once; it was
brought about by degrees, after her calamity, and after many struggles
to keep up--as a man who goes overboard hangs on to a spar whilst any
hope is left, and then flings it away and goes down, when he finds that
struggling is in vain.

She lingered about London whilst her husband was making preparations
for his departure to his seat of government, and it is believed made
more than one attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, and
to work upon his feelings, which she had almost enlisted in her favour.
As Sir Pitt and Mr. Wenham were walking down to the House of Commons,
the latter spied Mrs. Rawdon in a black veil, and lurking near the
palace of the legislature.  She sneaked away when her eyes met those of
Wenham, and indeed never succeeded in her designs upon the Baronet.

Probably Lady Jane interposed.  I have heard that she quite astonished
her husband by the spirit which she exhibited in this quarrel, and her
determination to disown Mrs. Becky.  Of her own movement, she invited
Rawdon to come and stop in Gaunt Street until his departure for
Coventry Island, knowing that with him for a guard Mrs. Becky would not
try to force her door; and she looked curiously at the superscriptions
of all the letters which arrived for Sir Pitt, lest he and his
sister-in-law should be corresponding.  Not but that Rebecca could have
written had she a mind, but she did not try to see or to write to Pitt
at his own house, and after one or two attempts consented to his demand
that the correspondence regarding her conjugal differences should be
carried on by lawyers only.

The fact was that Pitt's mind had been poisoned against her.  A short
time after Lord Steyne's accident Wenham had been with the Baronet and
given him such a biography of Mrs. Becky as had astonished the member
for Queen's Crawley.  He knew everything regarding her: who her father
was; in what year her mother danced at the opera; what had been her
previous history; and what her conduct during her married life--as I
have no doubt that the greater part of the story was false and dictated
by interested malevolence, it shall not be repeated here.  But Becky
was left with a sad sad reputation in the esteem of a country gentleman
and relative who had been once rather partial to her.

The revenues of the Governor of Coventry Island are not large.  A part
of them were set aside by his Excellency for the payment of certain
outstanding debts and liabilities, the charges incident on his high
situation required considerable expense; finally, it was found that he
could not spare to his wife more than three hundred pounds a year,
which he proposed to pay to her on an undertaking that she would never
trouble him. Otherwise, scandal, separation, Doctors' Commons would
ensue.  But it was Mr. Wenham's business, Lord Steyne's business,
Rawdon's, everybody's--to get her out of the country, and hush up a
most disagreeable affair.

She was probably so much occupied in arranging these affairs of
business with her husband's lawyers that she forgot to take any step
whatever about her son, the little Rawdon, and did not even once
propose to go and see him.  That young gentleman was consigned to the
entire guardianship of his aunt and uncle, the former of whom had
always possessed a great share of the child's affection.  His mamma
wrote him a neat letter from Boulogne, when she quitted England, in
which she requested him to mind his book, and said she was going to
take a Continental tour, during which she would have the pleasure of
writing to him again.  But she never did for a year afterwards, and
not, indeed, until Sir Pitt's only boy, always sickly, died of
hooping-cough and measles--then Rawdon's mamma wrote the most
affectionate composition to her darling son, who was made heir of
Queen's Crawley by this accident, and drawn more closely than ever to
the kind lady, whose tender heart had already adopted him.  Rawdon
Crawley, then grown a tall, fine lad, blushed when he got the letter.
"Oh, Aunt Jane, you are my mother!" he said; "and not--and not that
one." But he wrote back a kind and respectful letter to Mrs. Rebecca,
then living at a boarding-house at Florence. But we are advancing
matters.

Our darling Becky's first flight was not very far.  She perched upon
the French coast at Boulogne, that refuge of so much exiled English
innocence, and there lived in rather a genteel, widowed manner, with a
femme de chambre and a couple of rooms, at an hotel.  She dined at the
table d'hote, where people thought her very pleasant, and where she
entertained her neighbours by stories of her brother, Sir Pitt, and her
great London acquaintance, talking that easy, fashionable slip-slop
which has so much effect upon certain folks of small breeding.  She
passed with many of them for a person of importance; she gave little
tea-parties in her private room and shared in the innocent amusements
of the place in sea-bathing, and in jaunts in open carriages, in
strolls on the sands, and in visits to the play. Mrs. Burjoice, the
printer's lady, who was boarding with her family at the hotel for the
summer, and to whom her Burjoice came of a Saturday and Sunday, voted
her charming, until that little rogue of a Burjoice began to pay her
too much attention.  But there was nothing in the story, only that
Becky was always affable, easy, and good-natured--and with men
especially.

Numbers of people were going abroad as usual at the end of the season,
and Becky had plenty of opportunities of finding out by the behaviour
of her acquaintances of the great London world the opinion of "society"
as regarded her conduct.  One day it was Lady Partlet and her daughters
whom Becky confronted as she was walking modestly on Boulogne pier, the
cliffs of Albion shining in the distance across the deep blue sea.
Lady Partlet marshalled all her daughters round her with a sweep of her
parasol and retreated from the pier, darting savage glances at poor
little Becky who stood alone there.

On another day the packet came in.  It had been blowing fresh, and it
always suited Becky's humour to see the droll woe-begone faces of the
people as they emerged from the boat.  Lady Slingstone happened to be
on board this day.  Her ladyship had been exceedingly ill in her
carriage, and was greatly exhausted and scarcely fit to walk up the
plank from the ship to the pier.  But all her energies rallied the
instant she saw Becky smiling roguishly under a pink bonnet, and giving
her a glance of scorn such as would have shrivelled up most women, she
walked into the Custom House quite unsupported.  Becky only laughed:
but I don't think she liked it.  She felt she was alone, quite alone,
and the far-off shining cliffs of England were impassable to her.

The behaviour of the men had undergone too I don't know what change.
Grinstone showed his teeth and laughed in her face with a familiarity
that was not pleasant. Little Bob Suckling, who was cap in hand to her
three months before, and would walk a mile in the rain to see for her
carriage in the line at Gaunt House, was talking to Fitzoof of the
Guards (Lord Heehaw's son) one day upon the jetty, as Becky took her
walk there. Little Bobby nodded to her over his shoulder, without
moving his hat, and continued his conversation with the heir of Heehaw.
Tom Raikes tried to walk into her sitting-room at the inn with a cigar
in his mouth, but she closed the door upon him, and would have locked
it, only that his fingers were inside.  She began to feel that she was
very lonely indeed.  "If HE'D been here," she said, "those cowards
would never have dared to insult me." She thought about "him" with
great sadness and perhaps longing--about his honest, stupid, constant
kindness and fidelity; his never-ceasing obedience; his good humour;
his bravery and courage.  Very likely she cried, for she was
particularly lively, and had put on a little extra rouge, when she came
down to dinner.

She rouged regularly now; and--and her maid got Cognac for her besides
that which was charged in the hotel bill.

Perhaps the insults of the men were not, however, so intolerable to her
as the sympathy of certain women. Mrs. Crackenbury and Mrs. Washington
White passed through Boulogne on their way to Switzerland.  The party
were protected by Colonel Horner, young Beaumoris, and of course old
Crackenbury, and Mrs. White's little girl. THEY did not avoid her.
They giggled, cackled, tattled, condoled, consoled, and patronized her
until they drove her almost wild with rage.  To be patronized by THEM!
she thought, as they went away simpering after kissing her.  And she
heard Beaumoris's laugh ringing on the stair and knew quite well how to
interpret his hilarity.

It was after this visit that Becky, who had paid her weekly bills,
Becky who had made herself agreeable to everybody in the house, who
smiled at the landlady, called the waiters "monsieur," and paid the
chambermaids in politeness and apologies, what far more than
compensated for a little niggardliness in point of money (of which
Becky never was free), that Becky, we say, received a notice to quit
from the landlord, who had been told by some one that she was quite an
unfit person to have at his hotel, where English ladies would not sit
down with her.  And she was forced to fly into lodgings of which the
dulness and solitude were most wearisome to her.

Still she held up, in spite of these rebuffs, and tried to make a
character for herself and conquer scandal.  She went to church very
regularly and sang louder than anybody there.  She took up the cause of
the widows of the shipwrecked fishermen, and gave work and drawings for
the Quashyboo Mission; she subscribed to the Assembly and WOULDN'T
waltz.  In a word, she did everything that was respectable, and that is
why we dwell upon this part of her career with more fondness than upon
subsequent parts of her history, which are not so pleasant. She saw
people avoiding her, and still laboriously smiled upon them; you never
could suppose from her countenance what pangs of humiliation she might
be enduring inwardly.

Her history was after all a mystery.  Parties were divided about her.
Some people who took the trouble to busy themselves in the matter said
that she was the criminal, whilst others vowed that she was as innocent
as a lamb and that her odious husband was in fault. She won over a good
many by bursting into tears about her boy and exhibiting the most
frantic grief when his name was mentioned, or she saw anybody like him.
She gained good Mrs. Alderney's heart in that way, who was rather the
Queen of British Boulogne and gave the most dinners and balls of all
the residents there, by weeping when Master Alderney came from Dr.
Swishtail's academy to pass his holidays with his mother.  "He and her
Rawdon were of the same age, and so like," Becky said in a voice
choking with agony; whereas there was five years' difference between
the boys' ages, and no more likeness between them than between my
respected reader and his humble servant.  Wenham, when he was going
abroad, on his way to Kissingen to join Lord Steyne, enlightened Mrs.
Alderney on this point and told her how he was much more able to
describe little Rawdon than his mamma, who notoriously hated him and
never saw him; how he was thirteen years old, while little Alderney was
but nine, fair, while the other darling was dark--in a word, caused the
lady in question to repent of her good humour.

Whenever Becky made a little circle for herself with incredible toils
and labour, somebody came and swept it down rudely, and she had all her
work to begin over again.  It was very hard; very hard; lonely and
disheartening.

There was Mrs. Newbright, who took her up for some time, attracted by
the sweetness of her singing at church and by her proper views upon
serious subjects, concerning which in former days, at Queen's Crawley,
Mrs. Becky had had a good deal of instruction.  Well, she not only took
tracts, but she read them.  She worked flannel petticoats for the
Quashyboos--cotton night-caps for the Cocoanut Indians--painted
handscreens for the conversion of the Pope and the Jews--sat under Mr.
Rowls on Wednesdays, Mr. Huggleton on Thursdays, attended two Sunday
services at church, besides Mr. Bawler, the Darbyite, in the evening,
and all in vain.  Mrs. Newbright had occasion to correspond with the
Countess of Southdown about the Warmingpan Fund for the Fiji Islanders
(for the management of which admirable charity both these ladies formed
part of a female committee), and having mentioned her "sweet friend,"
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, the Dowager Countess wrote back such a letter
regarding Becky, with such particulars, hints, facts, falsehoods, and
general comminations, that intimacy between Mrs. Newbright and Mrs.
Crawley ceased forthwith, and all the serious world of Tours, where
this misfortune took place, immediately parted company with the
reprobate.  Those who know the English Colonies abroad know that we
carry with us us our pride, pills, prejudices, Harvey-sauces,
cayenne-peppers, and other Lares, making a little Britain wherever we
settle down.

From one colony to another Becky fled uneasily.  From Boulogne to
Dieppe, from Dieppe to Caen, from Caen to Tours--trying with all her
might to be respectable, and alas!  always found out some day or other
and pecked out of the cage by the real daws.

Mrs. Hook Eagles took her up at one of these places--a woman without a
blemish in her character and a house in Portman Square.  She was
staying at the hotel at Dieppe, whither Becky fled, and they made each
other's acquaintance first at sea, where they were swimming together,
and subsequently at the table d'hote of the hotel.  Mrs Eagles had
heard--who indeed had not?--some of the scandal of the Steyne affair;
but after a conversation with Becky, she pronounced that Mrs. Crawley
was an angel, her husband a ruffian, Lord Steyne an unprincipled
wretch, as everybody knew, and the whole case against Mrs. Crawley an
infamous and wicked conspiracy of that rascal Wenham.  "If you were a
man of any spirit, Mr. Eagles, you would box the wretch's ears the next
time you see him at the Club," she said to her husband.  But Eagles was
only a quiet old gentleman, husband to Mrs. Eagles, with a taste for
geology, and not tall enough to reach anybody's ears.

The Eagles then patronized Mrs. Rawdon, took her to live with her at
her own house at Paris, quarrelled with the ambassador's wife because
she would not receive her protegee, and did all that lay in woman's
power to keep Becky straight in the paths of virtue and good repute.

Becky was very respectable and orderly at first, but the life of
humdrum virtue grew utterly tedious to her before long.  It was the
same routine every day, the same dulness and comfort, the same drive
over the same stupid Bois de Boulogne, the same company of an evening,
the same Blair's Sermon of a Sunday night--the same opera always being
acted over and over again; Becky was dying of weariness, when, luckily
for her, young Mr. Eagles came from Cambridge, and his mother, seeing
the impression which her little friend made upon him, straightway gave
Becky warning.

Then she tried keeping house with a female friend; then the double
menage began to quarrel and get into debt.  Then she determined upon a
boarding-house existence and lived for some time at that famous mansion
kept by Madame de Saint Amour, in the Rue Royale, at Paris, where she
began exercising her graces and fascinations upon the shabby dandies
and fly-blown beauties who frequented her landlady's salons.  Becky
loved society and, indeed, could no more exist without it than an
opium-eater without his dram, and she was happy enough at the period of
her boarding-house life.  "The women here are as amusing as those in
May Fair," she told an old London friend who met her, "only, their
dresses are not quite so fresh.  The men wear cleaned gloves, and are
sad rogues, certainly, but they are not worse than Jack This and Tom
That.  The mistress of the house is a little vulgar, but I don't think
she is so vulgar as Lady ------" and here she named the name of a great
leader of fashion that I would die rather than reveal.  In fact, when
you saw Madame de Saint Amour's rooms lighted up of a night, men with
plaques and cordons at the ecarte tables, and the women at a little
distance, you might fancy yourself for a while in good society, and
that Madame was a real Countess.  Many people did so fancy, and Becky
was for a while one of the most dashing ladies of the Countess's salons.

But it is probable that her old creditors of 1815 found her out and
caused her to leave Paris, for the poor little woman was forced to fly
from the city rather suddenly, and went thence to Brussels.

How well she remembered the place!  She grinned as she looked up at the
little entresol which she had occupied, and thought of the Bareacres
family, bawling for horses and flight, as their carriage stood in the
porte-cochere of the hotel.  She went to Waterloo and to Laeken, where
George Osborne's monument much struck her.  She made a little sketch of
it.  "That poor Cupid!" she said; "how dreadfully he was in love with
me, and what a fool he was!  I wonder whether little Emmy is alive.  It
was a good little creature; and that fat brother of hers.  I have his
funny fat picture still among my papers.  They were kind simple people."

At Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame de Saint Amour to her
friend, Madame la Comtesse de Borodino, widow of Napoleon's General,
the famous Count de Borodino, who was left with no resource by the
deceased hero but that of a table d'hote and an ecarte table.
Second-rate dandies and roues, widow-ladies who always have a lawsuit,
and very simple English folks, who fancy they see "Continental society"
at these houses, put down their money, or ate their meals, at Madame de
Borodino's tables.  The gallant young fellows treated the company round
to champagne at the table d'hote, rode out with the women, or hired
horses on country excursions, clubbed money to take boxes at the play
or the opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the
ecarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in Devonshire about
their felicitous introduction to foreign society.

Here, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding-house queen, and ruled in
select pensions.  She never refused the champagne, or the bouquets, or
the drives into the country, or the private boxes; but what she
preferred was the ecarte at night,--and she played audaciously. First
she played only for a little, then for five-franc pieces, then for
Napoleons, then for notes:  then she would not be able to pay her
month's pension:  then she borrowed from the young gentlemen: then she
got into cash again and bullied Madame de Borodino, whom she had coaxed
and wheedled before:  then she was playing for ten sous at a time, and
in a dire state of poverty:  then her quarter's allowance would come
in, and she would pay off Madame de Borodino's score and would once
more take the cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier de
Raff.

When Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is that she owed three months'
pension to Madame de Borodino, of which fact, and of the gambling, and
of the drinking, and of the going down on her knees to the Reverend Mr.
Muff, Ministre Anglican, and borrowing money of him, and of her coaxing
and flirting with Milor Noodle, son of Sir Noodle, pupil of the Rev.
Mr. Muff, whom she used to take into her private room, and of whom she
won large sums at ecarte--of which fact, I say, and of a hundred of her
other knaveries, the Countess de Borodino informs every English person
who stops at her establishment, and announces that Madame Rawdon was no
better than a vipere.

So our little wanderer went about setting up her tent in various cities
of Europe, as restless as Ulysses or Bampfylde Moore Carew. Her taste
for disrespectability grew more and more remarkable.  She became a
perfect Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would make your
hair stand on end to meet.

There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of
English raffs--men whose names Mr. Hemp the officer reads out
periodically at the Sheriffs' Court--young gentlemen of very good
family often, only that the latter disowns them; frequenters of
billiard-rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and
gaming-tables.  They people the debtors' prisons--they drink and
swagger--they fight and brawl--they run away without paying--they have
duels with French and German officers--they cheat Mr. Spooney at
ecarte--they get the money and drive off to Baden in magnificent
britzkas--they try their infallible martingale and lurk about the tables
with empty pockets, shabby bullies, penniless bucks, until they can
swindle a Jew banker with a sham bill of exchange, or find another Mr.
Spooney to rob. The alternations of splendour and misery which these
people undergo are very queer to view.  Their life must be one of great
excitement.  Becky--must it be owned?--took to this life, and took to
it not unkindly.  She went about from town to town among these
Bohemians.  The lucky Mrs. Rawdon was known at every play-table in
Germany.  She and Madame de Cruchecassee kept house at Florence
together.  It is said she was ordered out of Munich, and my friend Mr.
Frederick Pigeon avers that it was at her house at Lausanne that he was
hocussed at supper and lost eight hundred pounds to Major Loder and the
Honourable Mr. Deuceace.  We are bound, you see, to give some account
of Becky's biography, but of this part, the less, perhaps, that is said
the better.

They say that, when Mrs. Crawley was particularly down on her luck, she
gave concerts and lessons in music here and there.  There was a Madame
de Raudon, who certainly had a matinee musicale at Wildbad, accompanied
by Herr Spoff, premier pianist to the Hospodar of Wallachia, and my
little friend Mr. Eaves, who knew everybody and had travelled
everywhere, always used to declare that he was at Strasburg in the year
1830, when a certain Madame Rebecque made her appearance in the opera
of the Dame Blanche, giving occasion to a furious row in the theatre
there.  She was hissed off the stage by the audience, partly from her
own incompetency, but chiefly from the ill-advised sympathy of some
persons in the parquet, (where the officers of the garrison had their
admissions); and Eaves was certain that the unfortunate debutante in
question was no other than Mrs. Rawdon Crawley.

She was, in fact, no better than a vagabond upon this earth.  When she
got her money she gambled; when she had gambled it she was put to
shifts to live; who knows how or by what means she succeeded? It is
said that she was once seen at St.  Petersburg, but was summarily
dismissed from that capital by the police, so that there cannot be any
possibility of truth in the report that she was a Russian spy at
Toplitz and Vienna afterwards.  I have even been informed that at Paris
she discovered a relation of her own, no less a person than her
maternal grandmother, who was not by any means a Montmorenci, but a
hideous old box-opener at a theatre on the Boulevards.  The meeting
between them, of which other persons, as it is hinted elsewhere, seem
to have been acquainted, must have been a very affecting interview.
The present historian can give no certain details regarding the event.

It happened at Rome once that Mrs. de Rawdon's half-year's salary had
just been paid into the principal banker's there, and, as everybody who
had a balance of above five hundred scudi was invited to the balls
which this prince of merchants gave during the winter, Becky had the
honour of a card, and appeared at one of the Prince and Princess
Polonia's splendid evening entertainments. The Princess was of the
family of Pompili, lineally descended from the second king of Rome, and
Egeria of the house of Olympus, while the Prince's grandfather,
Alessandro Polonia, sold wash-balls, essences, tobacco, and
pocket-handkerchiefs, ran errands for gentlemen, and lent money in a
small way.  All the great company in Rome thronged to his
saloons--Princes, Dukes, Ambassadors, artists, fiddlers, monsignori,
young bears with their leaders--every rank and condition of man. His
halls blazed with light and magnificence; were resplendent with gilt
frames (containing pictures), and dubious antiques; and the enormous
gilt crown and arms of the princely owner, a gold mushroom on a crimson
field (the colour of the pocket-handkerchiefs which he sold), and the
silver fountain of the Pompili family shone all over the roof, doors,
and panels of the house, and over the grand velvet baldaquins prepared
to receive Popes and Emperors.

So Becky, who had arrived in the diligence from Florence, and was
lodged at an inn in a very modest way, got a card for Prince Polonia's
entertainment, and her maid dressed her with unusual care, and she went
to this fine ball leaning on the arm of Major Loder, with whom she
happened to be travelling at the time--(the same man who shot Prince
Ravoli at Naples the next year, and was caned by Sir John Buckskin for
carrying four kings in his hat besides those which he used in playing
at ecarte )--and this pair went into the rooms together, and Becky saw
a number of old faces which she remembered in happier days, when she
was not innocent, but not found out. Major Loder knew a great number of
foreigners, keen-looking whiskered men with dirty striped ribbons in
their buttonholes, and a very small display of linen; but his own
countrymen, it might be remarked, eschewed the Major.  Becky, too, knew
some ladies here and there--French widows, dubious Italian countesses,
whose husbands had treated them ill--faugh--what shall we say, we who
have moved among some of the finest company of Vanity Fair, of this
refuse and sediment of rascals? If we play, let it be with clean cards,
and not with this dirty pack.  But every man who has formed one of the
innumerable army of travellers has seen these marauding irregulars
hanging on, like Nym and Pistol, to the main force, wearing the king's
colours and boasting of his commission, but pillaging for themselves,
and occasionally gibbeted by the roadside.

Well, she was hanging on the arm of Major Loder, and they went through
the rooms together, and drank a great quantity of champagne at the
buffet, where the people, and especially the Major's irregular corps,
struggled furiously for refreshments, of which when the pair had had
enough, they pushed on until they reached the Duchess's own pink velvet
saloon, at the end of the suite of apartments (where the statue of the
Venus is, and the great Venice looking-glasses, framed in silver), and
where the princely family were entertaining their most distinguished
guests at a round table at supper.  It was just such a little select
banquet as that of which Becky recollected that she had partaken at
Lord Steyne's--and there he sat at Polonia's table, and she saw him.
The scar cut by the diamond on his white, bald, shining forehead made a
burning red mark; his red whiskers were dyed of a purple hue, which
made his pale face look still paler.  He wore his collar and orders,
his blue ribbon and garter.  He was a greater Prince than any there,
though there was a reigning Duke and a Royal Highness, with their
princesses, and near his Lordship was seated the beautiful Countess of
Belladonna, nee de Glandier, whose husband (the Count Paolo della
Belladonna), so well known for his brilliant entomological collections,
had been long absent on a mission to the Emperor of Morocco.

When Becky beheld that familiar and illustrious face, how vulgar all of
a sudden did Major Loder appear to her, and how that odious Captain
Rook did smell of tobacco!  In one instant she reassumed her
fine-ladyship and tried to look and feel as if she were in May Fair
once more.  "That woman looks stupid and ill-humoured," she thought; "I
am sure she can't amuse him.  No, he must be bored by her--he never was
by me." A hundred such touching hopes, fears, and memories palpitated
in her little heart, as she looked with her brightest eyes (the rouge
which she wore up to her eyelids made them twinkle) towards the great
nobleman.  Of a Star and Garter night Lord Steyne used also to put on
his grandest manner and to look and speak like a great prince, as he
was. Becky admired him smiling sumptuously, easy, lofty, and stately.
Ah, bon Dieu, what a pleasant companion he was, what a brilliant wit,
what a rich fund of talk, what a grand manner!--and she had exchanged
this for Major Loder, reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, and
Captain Rook with his horsejockey jokes and prize-ring slang, and their
like.  "I wonder whether he will know me," she thought.  Lord Steyne
was talking and laughing with a great and illustrious lady at his side,
when he looked up and saw Becky.

She was all over in a flutter as their eyes met, and she put on the
very best smile she could muster, and dropped him a little, timid,
imploring curtsey.  He stared aghast at her for a minute, as Macbeth
might on beholding Banquo's sudden appearance at his ball-supper, and
remained looking at her with open mouth, when that horrid Major Loder
pulled her away.

"Come away into the supper-room, Mrs. R.," was that gentleman's remark:
"seeing these nobs grubbing away has made me peckish too. Let's go and
try the old governor's champagne." Becky thought the Major had had a
great deal too much already.

The day after she went to walk on the Pincian Hill--the Hyde Park of
the Roman idlers--possibly in hopes to have another sight of Lord
Steyne.  But she met another acquaintance there:  it was Mr. Fiche, his
lordship's confidential man, who came up nodding to her rather
familiarly and putting a finger to his hat.  "I knew that Madame was
here," he said; "I followed her from her hotel.  I have some advice to
give Madame."

"From the Marquis of Steyne?" Becky asked, resuming as much of her
dignity as she could muster, and not a little agitated by hope and
expectation.

"No," said the valet; "it is from me.  Rome is very unwholesome."

"Not at this season, Monsieur Fiche--not till after Easter."

"I tell Madame it is unwholesome now.  There is always malaria for some
people.  That cursed marsh wind kills many at all seasons. Look, Madame
Crawley, you were always bon enfant, and I have an interest in you,
parole d'honneur.  Be warned.  Go away from Rome, I tell you--or you
will be ill and die."

Becky laughed, though in rage and fury.  "What! assassinate poor little
me?" she said.  "How romantic!  Does my lord carry bravos for couriers,
and stilettos in the fourgons? Bah!  I will stay, if but to plague him.
I have those who will defend me whilst I am here."

It was Monsieur Fiche's turn to laugh now.  "Defend you," he said, "and
who? The Major, the Captain, any one of those gambling men whom Madame
sees would take her life for a hundred louis.  We know things about
Major Loder (he is no more a Major than I am my Lord the Marquis) which
would send him to the galleys or worse.  We know everything and have
friends everywhere. We know whom you saw at Paris, and what relations
you found there.  Yes, Madame may stare, but we do.  How was it that no
minister on the Continent would receive Madame? She has offended
somebody:  who never forgives--whose rage redoubled when he saw you.
He was like a madman last night when he came home.  Madame de
Belladonna made him a scene about you and fired off in one of her
furies."

"Oh, it was Madame de Belladonna, was it?" Becky said, relieved a
little, for the information she had just got had scared her.

"No--she does not matter--she is always jealous.  I tell you it was
Monseigneur.  You did wrong to show yourself to him.  And if you stay
here you will repent it.  Mark my words.  Go.  Here is my lord's
carriage"--and seizing Becky's arm, he rushed down an alley of the
garden as Lord Steyne's barouche, blazing with heraldic devices, came
whirling along the avenue, borne by the almost priceless horses, and
bearing Madame de Belladonna lolling on the cushions, dark, sulky, and
blooming, a King Charles in her lap, a white parasol swaying over her
head, and old Steyne stretched at her side with a livid face and
ghastly eyes.  Hate, or anger, or desire caused them to brighten now
and then still, but ordinarily, they gave no light, and seemed tired of
looking out on a world of which almost all the pleasure and all the
best beauty had palled upon the worn-out wicked old man.

"Monseigneur has never recovered the shock of that night, never,"
Monsieur Fiche whispered to Mrs. Crawley as the carriage flashed by,
and she peeped out at it from behind the shrubs that hid her.  "That
was a consolation at any rate," Becky thought.

Whether my lord really had murderous intentions towards Mrs. Becky as
Monsieur Fiche said (since Monseigneur's death he has returned to his
native country, where he lives much respected, and has purchased from
his Prince the title of Baron Ficci), and the factotum objected to have
to do with assassination; or whether he simply had a commission to
frighten Mrs. Crawley out of a city where his Lordship proposed to pass
the winter, and the sight of her would be eminently disagreeable to the
great nobleman, is a point which has never been ascertained:  but the
threat had its effect upon the little woman, and she sought no more to
intrude herself upon the presence of her old patron.

Everybody knows the melancholy end of that nobleman, which befell at
Naples two months after the French Revolution of 1830; when the Most
Honourable George Gustavus, Marquis of Steyne, Earl of Gaunt and of
Gaunt Castle, in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Hellborough, Baron
Pitchley and Grillsby, a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,
of the Golden Fleece of Spain, of the Russian Order of Saint Nicholas
of the First Class, of the Turkish Order of the Crescent, First Lord of
the Powder Closet and Groom of the Back Stairs, Colonel of the Gaunt or
Regent's Own Regiment of Militia, a Trustee of the British Museum, an
Elder Brother of the Trinity House, a Governor of the White Friars, and
D.C.L.--died after a series of fits brought on, as the papers said, by
the shock occasioned to his lordship's sensibilities by the downfall of
the ancient French monarchy.

An eloquent catalogue appeared in a weekly print, describing his
virtues, his magnificence, his talents, and his good actions.  His
sensibility, his attachment to the illustrious House of Bourbon, with
which he claimed an alliance, were such that he could not survive the
misfortunes of his august kinsmen.  His body was buried at Naples, and
his heart--that heart which always beat with every generous and noble
emotion was brought back to Castle Gaunt in a silver urn.  "In him,"
Mr. Wagg said, "the poor and the Fine Arts have lost a beneficent
patron, society one of its most brilliant ornaments, and England one of
her loftiest patriots and statesmen," &c., &c.

His will was a good deal disputed, and an attempt was made to force
from Madame de Belladonna the celebrated jewel called the "Jew's-eye"
diamond, which his lordship always wore on his forefinger, and which it
was said that she removed from it after his lamented demise. But his
confidential friend and attendant, Monsieur Fiche proved that the ring
had been presented to the said Madame de Belladonna two days before the
Marquis's death, as were the bank-notes, jewels, Neapolitan and French
bonds, &c., found in his lordship's secretaire and claimed by his heirs
from that injured woman.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: So what exactly has Becky been up to this whole time? The narrator would really like to catch us up with her but, well, her doings aren't really appropriate for polite conversation. The narrator makes a now-famous comparison between Becky and the sirens of Greek mythology. Sure she's really pretty sitting on a rock and singing, but only as long as you don't look too deep under the water to see her monstrous tail and the carnage and corpses of her devoured victims. Take that, Becky! Within the bounds of politeness, we learn that Becky has been traveling all over continental Europe, seeking out small colonies of British people to live among. Her life is a repetitive cycle now. She finds some people, befriends them, tells them her version of events, they believe her and like her, and then one of two things happens. Either she gets bored with normal, repetitive, daily life, or somehow one of the new friends gets word from London about her background, or the actual deal with Lord Steyne, or something else. Then she moves on to another place. It's a cycle, but also a downward spiral. Her social standing, and the standing of her friends, keeps getting lower and lower. She starts to drink more and gamble. Ever the thrill seeker, Becky starts to need a constantly higher order of thrills. Eventually she sinks low enough to try to get on the stage as a singer. But sadly, at this point her voice has been ruined by the drinking and the hard life she's been living. Finally, the last straw. One day, in Italy, she somehow manages to get an invitation to a fancy party, and who should be there but...Lord Steyne! Becky smiles at him and suddenly flashes back to memories of her former glory. He sees her and loses his, ahem, composure. The next day she goes for a walk in the fashionable district of town to try to see him, but is instead intercepted by his valet. The man tells Becky that if she stays in Italy, she will get sick and die. Steyne is still enraged at what happened and will never forgive her. Becky gets scared and leaves the city. Soon after this, though, Steyne has a series of fits and dies. His heirs and mistresses scramble over his inheritance and fortune.