Book the Third.
THE HORATIAD.
CHAPTER I.
CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE.
Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an exulting mood,
after parting with his young friend Valentine Hawkehurst at the London
Bridge terminus of the Brighton line. He was setting out upon an
adventure wild and impracticable as the quest of Jason and his Argonauts;
and this gallant captain was a carpet-knight, sufficiently adventurous
and audacious in the diplomatic crusades of society, but in nowise eager
to hazard his life on tented field and in thick press of war. If the
Fates had allowed the accomplished Horatio to choose his own destiny, he
would have elected to live in the immediate neighbourhood of St. James's
Street, from the first day to the last of the London season, and to dine
artistically and discreetly at one of those older and more exclusive
clubs dear and familiar to him from the bright years of his youth. He was
by nature a _flaneur_, a gossip, a lover of expensive luxuries and
frivolous pleasures. He was not only incapable of a high thought himself,
but was an unbeliever in the possibility of high thoughts or noble
principles in the world he lived in. He measured the universe by that
narrow scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him
Caesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him
all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all
statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders.
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