Vanity Fair - Page 64/573

I have heard a brother of the story-telling trade, at Naples, preaching

to a pack of good-for-nothing honest lazy fellows by the sea-shore,

work himself up into such a rage and passion with some of the villains

whose wicked deeds he was describing and inventing, that the audience

could not resist it; and they and the poet together would burst out

into a roar of oaths and execrations against the fictitious monster of

the tale, so that the hat went round, and the bajocchi tumbled into it,

in the midst of a perfect storm of sympathy.

At the little Paris theatres, on the other hand, you will not only hear

the people yelling out "Ah gredin! Ah monstre:" and cursing the tyrant

of the play from the boxes; but the actors themselves positively refuse

to play the wicked parts, such as those of infames Anglais, brutal

Cossacks, and what not, and prefer to appear at a smaller salary, in

their real characters as loyal Frenchmen. I set the two stories one

against the other, so that you may see that it is not from mere

mercenary motives that the present performer is desirous to show up and

trounce his villains; but because he has a sincere hatred of them,

which he cannot keep down, and which must find a vent in suitable abuse

and bad language.

I warn my "kyind friends," then, that I am going to tell a story of

harrowing villainy and complicated--but, as I trust, intensely

interesting--crime. My rascals are no milk-and-water rascals, I

promise you. When we come to the proper places we won't spare fine

language--No, no! But when we are going over the quiet country we must

perforce be calm. A tempest in a slop-basin is absurd. We will

reserve that sort of thing for the mighty ocean and the lonely

midnight. The present Chapter is very mild. Others--But we will not

anticipate THOSE.

And, as we bring our characters forward, I will ask leave, as a man and

a brother, not only to introduce them, but occasionally to step down

from the platform, and talk about them: if they are good and kindly, to

love them and shake them by the hand: if they are silly, to laugh at

them confidentially in the reader's sleeve: if they are wicked and

heartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms which politeness admits

of.

Otherwise you might fancy it was I who was sneering at the practice of

devotion, which Miss Sharp finds so ridiculous; that it was I who

laughed good-humouredly at the reeling old Silenus of a

baronet--whereas the laughter comes from one who has no reverence

except for prosperity, and no eye for anything beyond success. Such

people there are living and flourishing in the world--Faithless,

Hopeless, Charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with might

and main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and

fools: and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that

Laughter was made.