Vanity Fair - Page 421/573

It is all vanity to be sure, but who will not own to liking a little of

it? I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it

is transitory, dislikes roast beef? That is a vanity, but may every man

who reads this have a wholesome portion of it through life, I beg:

aye, though my readers were five hundred thousand. Sit down, gentlemen,

and fall to, with a good hearty appetite; the fat, the lean, the gravy,

the horse-radish as you like it--don't spare it. Another glass of

wine, Jones, my boy--a little bit of the Sunday side. Yes, let us eat

our fill of the vain thing and be thankful therefor. And let us make

the best of Becky's aristocratic pleasures likewise--for these too,

like all other mortal delights, were but transitory.

The upshot of her visit to Lord Steyne was that His Highness the Prince

of Peterwaradin took occasion to renew his acquaintance with Colonel

Crawley, when they met on the next day at the Club, and to compliment

Mrs. Crawley in the Ring of Hyde Park with a profound salute of the

hat. She and her husband were invited immediately to one of the

Prince's small parties at Levant House, then occupied by His Highness

during the temporary absence from England of its noble proprietor. She

sang after dinner to a very little comite. The Marquis of Steyne was

present, paternally superintending the progress of his pupil.

At Levant House Becky met one of the finest gentlemen and greatest

ministers that Europe has produced--the Duc de la Jabotiere, then

Ambassador from the Most Christian King, and subsequently Minister to

that monarch. I declare I swell with pride as these august names are

transcribed by my pen, and I think in what brilliant company my dear

Becky is moving. She became a constant guest at the French Embassy,

where no party was considered to be complete without the presence of

the charming Madame Ravdonn Cravley. Messieurs de Truffigny (of the

Perigord family) and Champignac, both attaches of the Embassy, were

straightway smitten by the charms of the fair Colonel's wife, and both

declared, according to the wont of their nation (for who ever yet met a

Frenchman, come out of England, that has not left half a dozen families

miserable, and brought away as many hearts in his pocket-book?), both,

I say, declared that they were au mieux with the charming Madame

Ravdonn.

But I doubt the correctness of the assertion. Champignac was very fond

of ecarte, and made many parties with the Colonel of evenings, while

Becky was singing to Lord Steyne in the other room; and as for

Truffigny, it is a well-known fact that he dared not go to the

Travellers', where he owed money to the waiters, and if he had not had

the Embassy as a dining-place, the worthy young gentleman must have

starved. I doubt, I say, that Becky would have selected either of

these young men as a person on whom she would bestow her special

regard. They ran of her messages, purchased her gloves and flowers,

went in debt for opera-boxes for her, and made themselves amiable in a

thousand ways. And they talked English with adorable simplicity, and

to the constant amusement of Becky and my Lord Steyne, she would mimic

one or other to his face, and compliment him on his advance in the

English language with a gravity which never failed to tickle the

Marquis, her sardonic old patron. Truffigny gave Briggs a shawl by way

of winning over Becky's confidante, and asked her to take charge of a

letter which the simple spinster handed over in public to the person to

whom it was addressed, and the composition of which amused everybody

who read it greatly. Lord Steyne read it, everybody but honest Rawdon,

to whom it was not necessary to tell everything that passed in the

little house in May Fair.