Chapter 38

"Speak not of niceness, when there's chance of wreck," The captain said, as ladies writhed their neck To see the dying dolphin flap the deck: "If we go down, on us these gentry sup; We dine upon them, if we haul them up. Wise men applaud us when we eat the eaters, As the devil laughs when keen folks cheat the cheaters." --THE SEA VOYAGE.

-

There was nothing in Duke's manner towards Christian which could have conveyed to that latter personage, experienced as he was in the worst possible ways of the world, that Buckingham would, at that particular moment, rather have seen the devil than himself; unless it was that Buckingham's reception of him, being rather extraordinarily courteous towards so old an acquaintance, might have excited some degree of suspicion.

Having escaped with some difficulty from the vague region of general compliments, which bears the same relation to that of business that Milton informs us the /Limbo Patrum/ has to the sensible and material earth, Christian asked his Grace of Buckingham, with the same blunt plainness with which he usually veiled a very deep and artificial character, whether he had lately seen Chiffinch or his helpmate?

"Neither of them lately," answered Buckingham. "Have not you waited on them yourself?--I thought you would have been more anxious about the great scheme."

"I have called once and again," said Christian, "but I can gain no access to the sight of that important couple. I begin to be afraid they are paltering with me."

"Which, by the welkin and its stars, you would not be slow in avenging, Master Christian. I know your puritanical principles on that point well," said the Duke. "Revenge may be well said to be sweet, when so many grave and wise men are ready to exchange for it all the sugar-plums which pleasures offer to the poor sinful people of the world, besides the reversion of those which they talk of expecting in the way of /post obit/."

"You may jest, my lord," said Christian, "but still----"

"But still you will be revenged on Chiffinch, and his little commodious companion. And yet the task may be difficult--Chiffinch has so many ways of obliging his master--his little woman is such a convenient pretty sort of a screen, and has such winning little ways of her own, that, in faith, in your case, I would not meddle with them. What is this refusing their door, man? We all do it to our best friends now and then, as well as to duns and dull company."

"If your Grace is in a humour of rambling thus wildly in your talk," said Christian, "you know my old faculty of patience--I can wait till it be your pleasure to talk more seriously."

"Seriously!" said his Grace--"Wherefore not?--I only wait to know what your serious business may be."