Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/97

Rh of the romantic Paul, her manner of venting her maternal reproaches was certainly not a little revolting to a lad of some delicacy of feeling. Indeed, it often occurred to him to leave her house altogether, and seek his fortunes alone, after the manner of the ingenious Gil Blas, or the enterprising Roderick Random; and this idea, though conquered and reconquered, gradually swelled and encreased at his heart, even as swelleth that hairy ball found in the stomach of some suffering heifer after its decease. Among these projects of enterprise, the reader will hereafter notice, that an early vision of the Green Forest cave, in which Turpin was accustomed, with a friend, a ham, and a wife, to conceal himself, flitted across his mind. At this time he did not, perhaps, incline to the mode of life practised by the hero of the roads; but he certainly clung not the less fondly to the notion of the cave.

The melancholy flow of our hero's life was now however about to be diverted by an unexpected turn, and the crude thoughts of boyhood, to burst, "like Ghilan's Giant Palm," into the fruit of a manly resolution.