 of one who has better claims to our
society.«
    I was completely recalled to my constitutional caution by this declaration;
and became so much afraid of committing myself, that I did not even venture to
explain to my aristocratic friend, that the gentleman whom he had named owed his
advancement, for aught I had ever heard, to certain works of his, which may,
without injury, be compared to romances in rhyme.
    The truth is, that, amongst some other unjust prejudices, at which I have
already hinted, the Marquis had contracted a horror, mingled with contempt, for
almost every species of author-craft slighter than that which compounds a folio
volume of law or of divinity, and looked upon the author of a romance, novel,
fugitive poem, or periodical piece of criticism, as men do on a venomous
reptile, with fear at once and with loathing. The abuse of the press, he
contended, especially in its lighter departments, had poisoned the whole
morality of Europe, and was once more gradually regaining an influence which had
been silenced amidst the voice of war. All writers, except those of the largest
and heaviest calibre, he conceived to be devoted to this evil cause, from
Rousseau and Voltaire down to Pigault le Brun and the author of the Scotch
novels; and although he admitted he read them pour passer le temps, yet, like
Pistol eating his leek, it was not without execrating the tendency, as he
devoured the story, of the work with which he was engaged.
    Observing this peculiarity, I backed out of the candid confession which my
vanity had meditated, and engaged the Marquis in farther remarks on the mansion
of his ancestors. »There,« he said, »was the theatre where my father used to
procure an order for the special attendance of some of the principal actors of
the Comédie Françoise, when the King and Madame Pompadour more than once visited
him at this place; - yonder, more to the centre, was the Baron's hall, where his
feudal jurisdiction was exercised when criminals were to be tried by the
Seigneur or his bailiff; for we had, like your old Scottish nobles, the right of
pit and gallows, or fossa cum furca, as the civilians term it; - beneath that
lies the Question-chamber, or apartment for torture; and truly, I am sorry a
right so liable to abuse should have been lodged in the hands of any living
creature. But,« he added, with a feeling of dignity derived even from the
atrocities which his ancestors had committed beneath the grated windows to which
