The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 360: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

338 REYNOLDS’ WORKS ‘Oh, no, my lord, not for worlds. Does your Grace feel better now?” ‘“‘ Yes, yes; the effect is passing off. I am almost sorry — But tell me, Purvis, do you not think I am very foolish — very weak-minded to have yielded — ” “No, my lord, not at all,’’ answered the steward; “ it was natural enough — ” The Duke of Marchmont drank another tumbler of water, and, taking up the wax candle, bade the steward good night. But as his fingers rested upon the handle of the door, he again turned toward the old man, and enjoined him to the strictest secrecy, — an injunction which Purvis for the fifth or sixth time promised to obey. Then the duke went forth, and if any one had seen him as he moved along the passages and descended the stairs leading to his own apartment, there would have been no cause to envy the lordly owner of the proud domain of Oaklands. His looks were thrown nervously about; the sounds of his own footsteps, his own shadow upon the wall, appeared to smite his very soul with a mortal terror. At length he regained his chamber, and then locking the door, he looked under the bed, behind the curtains, behind the window draperies also; he passed into his dress- ing-room, — into every nook and corner did he tremblingly and nervously peer, as if afraid to trust himself again to his couch unless previously assured that there was no one in his suite of apartments. And thus, let the reader rest assured, it often and often is with the patrician dwellers in splendid mansions and in marble palaces. Their lordly titles constitute no patent to guarantee them against the same feelings, the same sensa- tions, to which all the rest of the world are liable. Rank and riches may elevate them to the loftiest pedestals, but their souls move in the same sphere as those of the com- monest herd of human beings. They belong to the same earth; they breathe the same atmosphere. Strip them of their robes, and who shall be enabled to single them out as the members of a privileged order? All these circumstances prove the hideous mockery of raising one set of persons high above their fellows. In the aristocratic heaven they may blaze like meteors, but if they fall down upon the earth they prove to be merely stones. In the eyes of man only does the distinction exist: in the eyes of Heaven all are equal. [email protected]@