Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/133

 Rh orders from an artisan. The only creature capable of reveling in such an establishment was the author of "Coningsby" and "Lothair," to whom long rows of powdered footmen, "glowing in crimson liveries," were a spectacle as exhilarating as is a troop of Horse Guards to persons of a more martial cast of mind. Readers of "Lothair" will remember the home-coming of that young gentleman to Muriel Towers, where the house steward, and the chief butler, and the head gardener, and the lord of the kitchen, and the head forester, and the grooms of the stud and of the chambers stand in modest welcome behind the distinguished housekeeper, "who curtsied like the old court;" while the underlings await at a more "respectful distance" the arrival of their youthful master, whose sterling insignificance must have been painfully enhanced by all this solemn anticipation. "Even the mountains fear a rich man," says that ominous Turkish proverb which breathes the corruption of a nation; but it would have been a chicken-hearted molehill that trembled before such a homunculus as Lothair.

The finer adaptability of women makes