The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 170: what you’re looking at

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

152 REYNOLDS’ WORKS that your lordship has got a work in the press, and I know it is creating an immense sensation, for when I went to the cir- culating library yesterday to fetch your lordship Gulliver’s and Baron Munchausen’s Travels — ” “‘ Yes, yes, I just wanted to look at the books you name, to see how the tremendous falsehoods those fellows have recorded stand in sad contrast with the adventures, so start- ling though so truthful, which I am chronicling. But Inever thought, Makepeace, that I should have to wind up my book by writing myself down — not an ass, Makepeace, as Dog- berry did, but a—a—”’ “Traveller of the most unimpeachable veracity,” re- joined the valet, and now there was really something so exceedingly ludicrous in his master’s countenance, — his sense of degradation struggling with his pride, the con- viction of a sustained wrong yearning to proclaim itself, but held back by the shame of declaring what he felt himself to be, — all these feelings finding such comical expression in features whose aspect was at the best of times most ludicrous that the valet never experienced such difficulty in keeping his countenance. “It’s all very well that I am everything you say,” con- tinued the earl, with unusual pettishness, for never was his idea of his own greatness so cruelly shocked, or brought down to a level so closely bordering on a sense of abject littleness, ‘‘ but it does not prevent me from being, Make- peace — eh, Makepeace? — you know what I mean — a — a—?’’ and then with a desperate effort, and before the valet could interject another complimentary phrase, the earl blurted forth, “‘ a cuckold.”’ Makepeace started with an astonishment so admirably feigned that his master believed it to be perfectly genuine, and for nearly a minute they gazed upon each other, — the valet as if in speechless amazement, the earl with a grin that was most ludicrously doleful. “ My lord,” at length said the valet, “‘ there must be some terrible mistake i in all this. What! the countess forget her duty to her husband, and such a husband, — a husband who is in all respects one in ten thousand. Surely your lordship is labouring under a delusion? ”’ “Well, I don’t know, Makepeace. It’s true I’ve seen strange things in my time. There was the spectre of the EORMICLOOOKS. EO)