Voices in Time

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What a delightful life did we now lead! I knew I was born a gentleman from the kindly way in which I took to the business, as business it certainly is. For though it seems all pleasure, yet I assure any low-bred persons who may chance to read this that we, their betters, have to work as well as they: though I did not rise until noon, yet had I not been up at play until long past midnight? Many a time have we come home to bed as the troops were marching out to early parade; and oh! it did my heart good to hear the bugles blowing the reveillé before daybreak, or to see the regiments marching out to exercise, and think that I was no longer bound to that disgusting discipline, but restored to my natural station.

I came into it at once, and as if I had never done anything else all my life. I had a gentleman to wait upon me, a French friseur to dress my hair of a morning; I knew the taste of chocolate as by intuition almost and could distinguish between the right Spanish and the French before I had been a week in my new position; I had rings on all my fingers, watches in both my fobs, canes, trinkets, and snuffboxes of all sorts, and each outvying the other in elegance. I had the finest natural taste for lace and china of any man I ever knew; I could judge a horse as well as any Jew dealer in Germany; in shooting and athletic exercises, I was unrivalled; I could not spell, but I could speak German and French cleverly. I had at the least twelve suits of clothes: three richly embroidered with gold, two laced with silver, a garnet-coloured velvet pelisse lined with sable, one of French grey, silver-laced, and lined with chinchilla. I had damask morning robes. I took lessons on the guitar and sang French catches exquisitely. Where, in fact, was there a more accomplished gentleman than Redmond de Balibari?

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