Chapter 2

'Oh!'--MILTON.

'Ah!'--POPE.

A HISTORY.--A MYSTERY.--AN ORIGINAL REFLECTION ON DEATH.--THE
HEROINE DESCRIBED.--THE LANDSCAPE NOT DESCRIBED.--AN AWFUL REASON
GIVEN.

One evening, the Baroness De Violenci, having sprained her left leg
in the composition of an ecstatic ode, resolved not to go to Lady
Penthesilea Rouge's rout. While she was sitting alone, at a plate
of prawns, the footman entered with a basket, which had just been
left for her.

'Lay it down, John,' said she, touching his forehead with her fork.

That gay-hearted young fellow did as he was desired, and capered
out of the room.

Judge of her astonishment, when she found, on opening it, a little
cherub of a baby sleeping within.

An oaken cross, with 'HYSTERICA,' inscribed in chalk, was appended
at its neck, and a mark, like a bruised gooseberry, added interest
to its elbow.

As she and her lord never had children (at least she could answer
for herself), she determined, _sur le champ_, on adopting the
pretty Hysterica.

Fifteen years did this worthy woman dedicate to the progress of her
little charge; and in that time, taught her every mortal
accomplishment. Her sigh, particularly, was esteemed the softest in
Europe.

But the stroke of death is inevitable; come it must at last, and
neither virtue nor wisdom can avoid it. In a word, the good old
Baroness died, and our heroine fell senseless on her body.

O what a fall was there, my countrymen!

But it is now time to describe our heroine. As Milton tells us,
that Eve was '_more lovely than Pandora_' (an imaginary lady,
who never existed but in the brains of poets), so do we declare,
and are ready to stake our lives, that our heroine excelled in her
form the Timinitilidi, whom no man ever saw; and, in her voice, the
music of the spheres, which no man ever heard. Perhaps her face was
not perfect; but it was more--it was interesting--it was oval. Her
eyes were of the real, original old blue; and her eyelashes of the
best silk. You forget the thickness of her lips, in the casket of
pearls which they enshrined; and the roses of York and Lancaster
were united in her cheek. A nose of the Grecian order surmounted
the whole. Such was Hysterica.

But alas! misfortunes are often gregarious, like sheep. For one
night, when our heroine had repaired to the chapel, intending to
drop her customary tear on the tomb of her sainted benefactress,
she heard on a sudden,

Oh, horrid, horrible, and horridest horror!

the distant organ peal a solemn voluntary. While she was preparing,
in much terror and astonishment, to accompany it with her voice,
four men in masks rushed from among some tombs, and bore her to a
carriage, which instantly drove off with the whole party. In vain
she sought to soften them by swoons, tears, and a simple little
ballad: they sat counting murders, and not minding her.

As the blinds of the carriage were closed the whole way, we wave a
description of the country which they traversed. Besides, the
prospect within the carriage will occupy the reader enough; for in
one of the villains, Hysterica discovered--Count Stiletto! She
fainted.

On the second day, the carriage stopped at an old castle, and she
was conveyed into a tapestried apartment, where the delicate
creature instantly fell ill of an inverted eyelash, caused by
continual weeping. She then drew upon the contemplation of future
sorrows, for a supply of that melancholy which her immediate
exigencies demanded.