The sight of him was sufficient to rouse the almost fainting spirits of the Queen; and, without speaking a single word, she and Clara hurried after their conductors, to the wood where the horses were waiting for them.
They mounted, still in perfect silence, and hurried through the most intricate paths they could find; for, as morning dawned, they feared inevitable destruction. Before it became quite light, however, they had reached a thick wood, near the centre of which, they found a half ruined hut; and here did the ci-devant Queen of England and her suite try to obtain a few hours’ repose. But, alas! sleep fled from Elvira’s eyes; she could not forget she was a fugitive in her own kingdom, flying with terror from those very people who, but a few months before, had almost worshipped her as a goddess; and not even the exhaustion of her body could overcome the hurry of her spirits, whilst every time she closed her eyes, and felt a soft doze creeping over her troubled senses, she started up again in horror, fancying her pursuers had overtaken her.
Consternation reigned in the palace when the flight of Elvira, and the defection of Prince Ferdinand were made known there. “She is gone to Germany!” was the universal cry, and troops were directly dispatched to all the seaports, whilst a whole fleet of balloons were ordered to scour the air in all directions, and arrest every aerial vehicle they should meet with, whose passengers could not give a perfectly satisfactory account of themselves. These commissions were executed to the letter, as the guards now sought by extra diligence to excuse the negligence with which they had suffered the Queen to escape; and numerous were the wandering lovers, absconding clerks, and unfaithful wives, who were brought before the Council instead of Elvira and the German Prince, of whom, however, nothing could be heard, their measures having been taken too well to expose them to detection.
In the meantime, Clara being missed, the Duke and Sir Ambrose were inconsolable; and dispatched emissaries everywhere in search of her. Amongst the rest, Father Murphy and Abelard were sent to explore every corner of the grounds, and the disconsolate searchers having in vain wandered through the gardens, restless and forlorn, at last arrived upon the banks of the river. The aspect of the place was dreary in the extreme: evening was closing in; the river looked dark and dull, and Father Murphy shivered and crossed himself as he looked around.
“Och, murther! but this is an awful place, Mr. Abelard,” said he: “and I’m after thinking the sooner we get out of it the better.”
“Ah, what is that?” cried the butler, springing forward eagerly, and snatching at something in the bushes that looked light.
It was Clara’s mantle. Abelard uttered a groan of horror as he recognized it; and the priest starting at the sound, his foot slipped, and he rolled into the water, floundering about like a huge porpoise.
“Oh dear! oh dear!” cried Abelard, “he will certainly be drowned. Submersion in an aqueous fluid is almost always destructive of animal life, and I see little chance that he has of escape.”
“Och! and will ye let me drown while ye’re talking?” asked the indignant priest. “Before it’s the good-natured thing ye’d be doing in pulling me out, will ye let me be suffocated?”
“No, no, certainly not!” returned Abelard; “my agony is unspeakable at your distress. I only doubt how I shall be able to raise you without a lever or pully. The application of the mechanical powers—”
“May go to the devil,” cried Father Murphy, as he crawled out without assistance; “and so you would have let me drown, whilst you are talking of the mechanical powers?”
“Excuse me, father,” returned Abelard; “friendship is a powerful affection of the human mind; it invigorates, it warms—”
“Does it,” said the priest, shaking himself like a water-spaniel; “then I should be very glad to have a little of it at present, for I am shivering with cold.”
“I am surprised to hear you talk of cold, father,” said Abelard. “You are, surely, too fat to feel cold; for animal oil is universally allowed to be a bad conductor of caloric.”
Father Murphy did not speak, but his look was sufficient, and his teeth clattering in his head afforded an ample commentary upon the text.
“It is strange,” continued the butler, “that fat people generally seem ashamed of their obesity, for they have many advantages which lean people never can enjoy. For instance, they ought never to feel any violent craving for food. Fat serving as an interdium, through which the nutritive matter extracted from food passes, before it is assimilated to repair the loss of the individual, ought to serve as a magazine to supply his wants; and a fat man should be able to abstain from food much longer than another; because, during his abstinence, the collected fat must be rapidly reabsorbed.”
“Oh!” groaned Father Murphy, “would to Heaven I had a broiled rump steak at this moment, smoking hot, and swimming in gravy; and a fine frothing pot of porther!”
“A rump steak is no bad thing,” resumed Abelard, his mouth watering at the bare mention of the savory viand; “and I do not wish it to be understood, by any means, that a man can live without eating. On the contrary, the indivisibility and individuality of the living body, can only be maintained by an incessant change of the particles which enter into its composition; part of the animal food being reduced into chyle, and part becoming bones; which are, in fact, only secretory organs, incrusted with phospate of lime. The lymphatic vessels remove this salt, and—”
“Och! and it’s Clara you are forgetting all this while,” interrupted Father Murphy. “The purty creature!—sure, and it’s her manthle after all, so it is; and here we are talking of stuff and nonsense; and quite forgetting she’s drowned, and kilt all over, pure
