"You're a military man," he went on; "I ask you, Bill Dobbin, could any man ever have speculated upon the return of that Corsican scoundrel from Elba? When the allied sovereigns were here last year, and we gave 'em that dinner in the City, sir, and we saw the Temple of Concord, and the fireworks, and the Chinese bridge in St.James's Park, could any sensible man suppose that peace wasn't really concluded, after we'd actually sung Te Deum for it, sir? I ask you, William, could I suppose that the Emperor of Austria was a damned traitor--a traitor, and nothing more? I don't mince words--a double-faced infernal traitor and schemer, who meant to have his son-in-law back all along.And I say that the escape of Boney from Elba was a damned imposition and plot, sir, in which half the powers of Europe were concerned, to bring the funds down, and to ruin this country.That's why I'm here, William.That's why my name's in the Gazette.Why, sir?--because I trusted the Emperor of Russia and the Prince Regent.Look here.Look at my papers.Look what the funds were on the 1st of March --what the French fives were when I bought for the count.And what they're at now.There was collusion, sir, or that villain never would have escaped.Where was the English Commissioner who allowed him to get away? He ought to be shot, sir--brought to a court-martial, and shot, by Jove.""We're going to hunt Boney out, sir," Dobbin said, rather alarmed at the fury of the old man, the veins of whose forehead began to swell, and who sate drumming his papers with his clenched fist."We are going to hunt him out, sir--the Duke's in Belgium already, and we expect marching orders every day.""Give him no quarter.Bring back the villain's head, sir.
Shoot the coward down, sir," Sedley roared."I'd enlist myself, by--; but I'm a broken old man--ruined by that damned scoundrel--and by a parcel of swindling thieves in this country whom I made, sir, and who are rolling in their carriages now," he added, with a break in his voice.
Dobbin was not a little affected by the sight of this once kind old friend, crazed almost with misfortune and raving with senile anger.Pity the fallen gentleman: you to whom money and fair repute are the chiefest good; and so, surely, are they in Vanity Fair.
"Yes," he continued, "there are some vipers that you warm, and they sting you afterwards.There are some beggars that you put on horseback, and they're the first to ride you down.You know whom I mean, William Dobbin, my boy.I mean a purse-proud villain in Russell Square, whom I knew without a shilling, and whom Ipray and hope to see a beggar as he was when Ibefriended him."
"I have heard something of this, sir, from my friend George," Dobbin said, anxious to come to his point."The quarrel between you and his father has cut him up a great deal, sir.Indeed, I'm the bearer of a message from him.""O, THAT'S your errand, is it?" cried the old man, jumping up."What! perhaps he condoles with me, does he?
Very kind of him, the stiff-backed prig, with his dandified airs and West End swagger.He's hankering about my house, is he still? If my son had the courage of a man, he'd shoot him.He's as big a villain as his father.I won't have his name mentioned in my house.I curse the day that ever I let him into it; and I'd rather see my daughter dead at my feet than married to him.""His father's harshness is not George's fault, sir.Your daughter's love for him is as much your doing as his.Who are you, that you are to play with two young people's affections and break their hearts at your will?""Recollect it's not his father that breaks the match off,"old Sedley cried out."It's I that forbid it.That family and mine are separated for ever.I'm fallen low, but not so low as that: no, no.And so you may tell the whole race--son, and father and sisters, and all."
"It's my belief, sir, that you have not the power or the right to separate those two," Dobbin answered in a low voice; "and that if you don't give your daughter your consent it will be her duty to marry without it.There's no reason she should die or live miserably because you are wrong-headed.To my thinking, she's just as much married as if the banns had been read in all the churches in London.And what better answer can there be to Osborne's charges against you, as charges there are, than that his son claims to enter your family and marry your daughter?"A light of something like satisfaction seemed to break over old Sedley as this point was put to him: but he still persisted that with his consent the marriage between Amelia and George should never take place.
"We must do it without," Dobbin said, smiling, and told Mr.Sedley, as he had told Mrs.Sedley in the day, before, the story of Rebecca's elopement with Captain Crawley.It evidently amused the old gentleman."You're terrible fellows, you Captains," said he, tying up his papers; and his face wore something like a smile upon it, to the astonishment of the blear-eyed waiter who now entered, and had never seen such an expression upon Sedley's countenance since he had used the dismal coffee-house.
The idea of hitting his enemy Osborne such a blow soothed, perhaps, the old gentleman: and, their colloquy presently ending, he and Dobbin parted pretty good friends.
"My sisters say she has diamonds as big as pigeons'
