from a letter which Mr. George Vertue wrote to a friend of mine in London, and that friend despatched to me. For, since the picture is a portrait of myself, it may be that an account of it from another's hand will be the more readily credited. Mr. Vertue saw it some years since at a dealer's in Paris, whither, being at that time hard pressed for money, I had sent it, but was lucky enough not to discover a purchaser.

"I have come across a very curious picture," he wrote, "of which I would gladly know more, and I trust that you may help me to the knowledge. For more than once you have spoken to me of Mr. Lawrence Clavering, who fought for the Chevalier de St. George at Preston, and was out too in the Forty-five. The picture is the bust of a young gentleman painted by Anthony Herbert, and with all the laborious minuteness which was distinctive of his earlier methods. Indeed, in the delicacy with which the lace of the cravat is figured, the painter has, I think, exceeded himself, and even exceeded Vandermijn, whom at this period he seems to have taken for his model. The coat, too, which is of a rose-pink in colour, is painted with the same elaboration, the very threads of the velvet being visible. The richness of the work gives a very artful effect when you come to look at the face, which chiefly provokes my curiosity. In colour it is a dead white, except for the lips, which are purple, as though the blood stagnated there; the eyes are glassy and bright, with something of horror or fear staring out of them; the features knotted out of all comeliness; the mouth half opened and curled in the very sickness of pain; the whole expression, in a word, that of a man in the extremity of suffering--a soul's torture superimposed upon an agony of the body; and all this painted with such circumstantial exactness as implies not merely great leisure in the artist, but also a singular pleasure and gusto in his subject...."

After a few more remarks of a like sort, he continues: "I made it my business to inquire of Mr. Herbert the history of the picture. But he would tell me no more than this: that it was the portrait of Mr. Lawrence Clavering, painted in that gentleman's youth, and that if I would have fuller knowledge on the matter, I must get it from Mr. Clavering himself; and Mrs. Herbert, a very gentle woman, now growing old, but I should say of considerable beauty in her prime, warmly seconded him in his reticence. Therefore I address myself to you to act as an intermediary between Mr. Clavering and myself."

The information I did not think it fitting at that time to deliver. But both Mr. Herbert and his wife are dead these three years past; and so I write out the history of my picture, setting down, as my memory serves, the incidents which attach to it in the due order of their sequence. For if the picture is a strange one, it has, I think, a history to match.

CHAPTER II.

I TAKE A WALK AND HEAR A SERMON IN THE COMPANY OF LORD BOLINGBROKE.

That history I take to have begun on the 28th day of March at Paris in the year 1715. I was sitting in my room at the Jesuit College in the Rue St Antoine, with the "De Imitatione" at one elbow, and Marco Polo's travels at the other; and, alas! I fear that I gave more attention to the adventurer than I did to the theologian. But, in truth, neither author occupied the chief place in my thoughts. For the spring sparkled in the air, its music was noisy among the budding trees, and something of its music, too, seemed to be singing in my blood. From my window I looked down across the roof-tops to the Île St. Louis, and I could see a strip of the Seine flashing in the sunlight like a riband of steel. It was on the current of the river that my thoughts floated, yet they travelled faster than the current, seeing that while I still looked they had reached the bar where the river clashes with the sea. I had the tumble of its waters in my ears when the door was opened, and one of the lay coadjutors entered with a message that the rector wished to speak with me.

I followed him down the stairs, not without a guilty apprehension as to the nature of the interview in store for me, and found the rector pacing backwards and forwards across one end of the hall, with his hands folded behind his back. As I made my reverence, he stopped and eyed me for a moment thoughtfully.

"Twelve months since," said he, "you received from the Duke of Ormond in England the offer of a cornetcy in the Horse Guards."

"Yes, Father," I replied, taken aback by his unexpected commencement; and I replied hastily, "I refused it."

"You refused it!" he repeated very deliberately; and then, suddenly bending his eyebrows, "And without reluctance?"

I felt my face flush as he asked the question. "Father," I stammered, "I refused it;" and so came to a stop.

He nodded his head once or twice, but pressed me no further upon the point. Instead--

"You know at whose instance the commission was offered to you?" he asked.

"I have no certain knowledge," I replied, with considerable relief; "but I can think of but one person in the world with the power and inclination to do me that service."

"Ah," broke in the rector, sharply, "you count it a service, then?"

"He would count it a service," I answered, with a clumsy effort to retrieve the mistake. "For my part, Father, I refused it."

"Precisely," said he. "He would count it a service he was doing you. There are no fine feathers in our army, and there is no leisure to parade them were there any. Yes, Lord Bolingbroke would count it a service he was doing you."

Now, although the relationship between Lord Bolingbroke and myself was the merest thread--my father having married a niece of Lady Joanna St. John--I was well enough acquainted with his diligence to know that the sneer was unjust; and I was preparing to make some rejoinder in a proper spirit of humility when the rector continued--

"It is of Lord Bolingbroke that I wish to speak to you. He is in Paris."

"In Paris, Father!" I exclaimed incredulously.

"In Paris. He came last night, and asks permission of me this morning that you should wait on him."

"Father," I cried, "you will give that permission?"

He shook his head over my eagerness and resumed his walk.

"Very well," he said at length, and he gave me Lord Bolingbroke's address. "You can go now," he added.

I waited no longer than sufficed to utter a brief word of thanks, and hurried towards the door.

"My son."

I turned back towards the rector, with a doleful thought that he would revoke his permission. But as I approached him reluctantly enough, I saw something of a smile brighten upon his rigorous face.

"My son," he said, without a trace of his former severity, "you have taken no vows as yet, and will not for eight months to come. Think, and think humbly, during those months! Our Order, thank God, is not so poor in service that we need to reckon obstinacy as devotion."

I stood abashed and shamefaced at his words. "Father," I said, "I have chosen."

"But it is for us to ratify the choice," he answered, with a cast back to his former sternness, "or to annul it as unworthy." With that he dismissed me; but this time, being somewhat stung by his warning, I retired with a more decorous step. Once in the street, however, I made up for the delay. For, in truth, I was at