Ernest Maltravers — Volume 05 eBook

It was, as Cleveland said, just at that time of year when people are at leisure to make new acquaintances.  A few only of the most difficult houses in town were open; and their doors were cheerfully expanded to the accomplished ward of the popular Cleveland.  Authors and statesmen, and orators, and philosophers—­to all he was presented;—­all seemed pleased with him, and Ernest became the fashion before he was conscious of the distinction.  But he had rightly foreboded.  He had commenced life too soon; he was disappointed; he found some persons he could admire, some whom he could like, but none with whom he could grow intimate, or for whom he could feel an interest.  Neither his heart nor his imagination was touched; all appeared to him like artificial machines; he was discontented with things like life, but in which something or other was wanting.  He more than ever recalled the brilliant graces of Valerie de Ventadour, which had thrown a charm over the most frivolous circles; he even missed the perverse and fantastic vanity of Castruccio.  The mediocre poet seemed to him at least less mediocre than the worldlings about him.  Nay, even the selfish good spirits and dry shrewdness of Lumley Ferrers would have been an acceptable change to the dull polish and unrevealed egotism of jealous wits and party politicians.  “If these are the flowers of the parterre, what must be the weeds?” said Maltravers to himself, returning from a party at which he had met half a score of the most orthodox lions.

He began to feel the aching pain of satiety.

But the winter glided away—­the season commenced, and Maltravers was whirled on with the rest into the bubbling vortex.

CHAPTER III.

  “And crowds commencing mere vexation,
   Retirement sent its invitation.”—­SHENSTONE.

The tench, no doubt, considers the pond in which he lives as the Great World.  There is no place, however stagnant, which is not the great world to the creatures that move about, in it.  People who have lived all their lives in a village still talk of the world as if they had ever seen it!  An old woman in a hovel does not put her nose out of her door on a Sunday without thinking she is going amongst the pomps and vanities of the great world. Ergo, the great world is to all of us the little circle in which we live.  But as fine people set the fashion, so the circle of fine people is called the Great World par excellence.  Now this great world is not a bad thing when we thoroughly understand it; and the London great world is at least as good as any other.  But then we scarcely do understand that or anything else in our beaux jours,—­which, if they are sometimes the most exquisite, are also often the most melancholy and the most wasted portion of our life.  Maltravers had not yet found out either the set that pleased him or the species of amusement that really amused.  Therefore he