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That jaw was the jaw of the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard. Yet to his sins he never added the crowning one of hypocrisy. His vices were as open as his virtues. In some quaint freak of Nature, two spirits seemed to have been joined in one body, and the same frame to contain the best and the worst man of his age.
Both are in essence processes of spicing up and coloring up perfectly innocuous facts of nature to make them poisonously attractive to perverted palates. The wishy-washy literature and the wishy-washy morality on which it is based are not one stage more or less rotten than the libertine literature and the libertine morality on which it is based.
I shall not go into a pet like you; I am in earnest. I shall just say to him, 'Dujardin, I know all! Then if he is guilty his face will show it directly. Then I shall say, 'Comrade, you must marry her whom you have dishonored." "He will not. He is a libertine, a rascal." "You are speaking of a man you don't know. He WILL marry her and repair the wrong he has done." "Suppose he refuses?"
Yes, let me tell the libertine of fancy when he despises understanding in woman that the mind, which he disregards, gives life to the enthusiastic affection from which rapture, short-lived as it is, alone can flow! And, that, without virtue, a sexual attachment must expire, like a tallow candle in the socket, creating intolerable disgust.
Do you know what a good man was heard to say of me the other day? 'Stuart would be one of the greatest soldiers in the army, if he did not drink so hard! And others add: 'if he were not a libertine. Well, need I defend myself to you, from these charges? I promised my mother in my childhood, never to touch ardent spirits, and a drop has never passed my lips, except the wine of the communion.
And why should you stand to be blackened by scandalmongers when a few words of mine will prove that instead of weak you have been strong, instead of libertine blameless? I am not using fine phrases: I would not. I would be as thoughtful of you as if you were present. And for her sake, I repeat, the truth should be told to her. I have a lock of her hair. 'Cecilia's? Where? said Beauchamp.
He had a character both grave and dignified, religious and poetic, friendly and polite, indulgent and sincere, which never allowed truth to be profaned by libertine frivolity, nor faith to be confounded with austere duplicity.
I wrote with all the freedom of one who feared not the face of a critic; and, indeed, thanks to the obscurity of its original production, and its re-issue as the ordinary two-shilling railway novel, this first novel of mine has almost entirely escaped the critical lash, and has pursued its way as a chartered libertine.
Many men of this age, from a false and pretended delicacy to a friend, would have quietly pursued their own affairs, and thought it more honourable to leave an unsuspecting young creature to the mercy of a libertine, than to risk his displeasure by taking measures for her security. Your evident concern at leaving London is very natural, and yet it afflicts me.
To return to Father Xavier; he put to sea at Cochin, and sailed towards Cambaya. In the ship there was a Portuguese gentleman, much a libertine, and one of those declared atheists who make a boast of their impiety. This was motive enough for the holy man to make acquaintance with him. He kept him company, and was even so complaisant as to entertain him with pleasant conversation.
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