Sir John Constantine - Memoirs of His Adventures At Home and Abroad and Particularly in the Island of Corsica: Beginning with the Year 1756

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

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• Publié par: ticis
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 8
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's Sir John Constantine, by
Prosper Paleologus Constantine
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Title: Sir John Constantine Memoirs Of His
Adventures At Home And Abroad And Particularly
In The Island Of Corsica: Beginning With The Year
1756
Author: Prosper Paleologus Constantine
Editor: "Q" (A. T. Quiller-Couch)
Release Date: April 6, 2005 [EBook #15565]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE ***
Produced by Lionel SearSIR JOHN
CONSTANTINE.
MEMOIRS OF HIS ADVENTURES AT HOME AND
ABROAD AND PARTICULARLY IN THE ISLAND
OF CORSICA: BEGINNING WITH THE YEAR
1756.
WRITTEN BY HIS SON PROSPER
PALEOLOGUS OTHERWISE CONSTANTINE
AND EDITED BY "Q" (A. T. QUILLER-COUCH).
"For knighthood is not in the feats of warre,
As for to fight in quarrel right or wrong,
But in a cause which truth can not defarre
He ought himself for to make sure and strong
Justice to keep mixt with mercy among:
And no quarrell a knight ought to take
But for a truth, or for a woman's sake."
TO THE READER
A hundred and fifty episodes, two sermons, and anumber of moral digressions, have been omitted
from this story.
The late ingenious Mr. Fett (whose acquaintance
you will make in the following pages), having been
commissioned by Mr. Dodsley, the publisher, to
write a conspectus of the Present State of the Arts
in Italy at two guineas the folio—a fair price for that
class of work— had delivered close upon two
hundred folios before Mr. Dodsley interposed,
professing unbounded admiration of the work, its
style, and matter, but desiring to know when he
might expect the end: "For," said he, "I have other
enterprises which will soon be demanding
attention, and, as a business-man, I like to make
my arrangements in good time." To this Mr. Fett
replied, that he, for his part, being well content with
the rate of remuneration, did not propose to end
the work at all!—and, the agreement, having
unaccountably failed to stipulate for any such thing
as a conclusion, Mr. Dodsley had to compound for
one at a crippling price.
So this story had, in Browning's phrase, "grown old
along with me," but for the forethought of Messrs.
Smith, Elder and Co., in limiting its serial flow to
twelve numbers of The Cornhill Magazine As it is, I
have added a few chapters; but a hundred and fifty
episodes remain unwritten, with the courtships of
Mr. Priske, and the funeral oration spoken by the
Rev. Mr. Grylls over the cenotaph Of Sir John
Constantine in Constantine Parish Church. These
omissions, however, may be remedied if you will
ask the publishers for another edition.Now, if it be objected against some of the
adventures of Sir John Constantine that they are
extravagant, or against some of his notions that
they are fantastic, I answer that this book attempts
to describe a man and not one of these calculable
little super men who, of late, have been taking up
so much more of your attention than they deserve.
Students who engage in psychical research, as it is
called, often confess themselves puzzled by the
behaviour of ghosts, it appears to them wayward
and trivial. How much more likely are ghosts to be
puzzled by the actions of real men? And we are
surely ghosts if we keep nothing of the blood which
sent our fathers like schoolboys to the crusades.
Lastly, my friend, if you would know anything of the
writer who has so often addressed you under an
initial, you may find as much of him here as in any
of his books. Here is interred part, at any rate, of
the soul of the Bachelor Q, in a book which, though
it tell of adventures, I would ask you not to disdain,
though you be a boy no longer. An acquaintance of
mine near the Land's End had a remarkably fine
tree of apples—to be precise, of Cox's Orange
Pippins—and one night was robbed of the whole of
them. But what, think you, had the thief left behind
him, at the foot of the tree? Why, a pair of gold-
rimmed spectacles.
ARTHUR T. QUILLER-COUCH.
THE HAVEN, FOWEY, October 1st, 1906.CONTENTS
Chapter.
I. OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR
JOHN CONSTANTINE.
II. I RIDE ON A PILGRIMAGE.
III. I ACQUIRE A KINGDOM.
IV. LONG VACATION.
V. THE SILENT MEN.
VI. HOW MY FATHER OUT OF NOTHING BUILT
AN ARMY, AND IN FIVE MINUTES PLANNED AN
INVASION.
VII. THE COMPANY OF THE ROSE.
VIII. TRIBULATIONS OF A MAYOR.
IX. I ENLIST AN ARMY.
X. OF THE DISCOURSE HELD ON BOARD THE
"GAUNTLET".XI. WE FALL IN WITH A SALLEE ROVER.
XII. HOW WE LANDED ON THE ISLAND.
XIII. HOW, WITHOUT FIGHTING, OUR ARMY
WASTED BY ENCHANTMENT.
XIV. HOW BY MEANS OF HER WINE I CAME TO
CIRCE.
XV. I BECOME HOSTAGE TO PRINCESS
CAMILLA.
XVI. THE FOREST HUT.
XVII. THE FIRST CHALLENGE.
XVIII. THE TENDER MERCIES OF PRINCE
CAMILLO.
XIX. HOW MARC'ANTONIO NURESD ME AND
GAVE ME COUNSEL.
XX. I LEARN OF LIBERTY, AND AM RESTORED
TO IT.
XXI. OF MY FATHER'S ANABASIS; AND THE
DIFFERENT TEMPERS OF AN ENGLISHGENTLEMAN AND A WILD SHEEP OF
CORSICA.
XXII. THE GREAT ADVENTURE.
XXIII. ORDEAL AND CHOOSING.
XXIV. THE WOOING OF PRINCESS CAMILLA.
XXV. MY WEDDING DAY.
XXVI. THE FLAME AND THE ALTAR.
XXVII. MY MISTRESS RE-ENLISTS ME.
XXVIII. GENOA.
XXIX. VENDETTA.
XXX. THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.
POSTSCRIPT.SIR JOHN
CONSTANTINE.CHAPTER I.
OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR
JOHN CONSTANTINE.
"I have laboured to make a covenant with
myself, that affection may not press upon
judgment: for I suppose there is no man, that
hath any apprehension of gentry or
nobleness, but his affection stands to a
continuance of a noble name and house, and
would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to
uphold it: and yet time hath his revolution,
there must be a period and an end of all
temporal things, finis rerum, an end of
names and dignities and whatsoever is
terrene. . . . For where is Bohun? Where is
Mowbray? Where is Mortimer? Nay, which is
more and most of all, where is Plantagenet?
They are intombed in the urns and
sepulchres of mortality."—Lord Chief Justice
Crewe.
My father, Sir John Constantine of Constantine, in
the county of Cornwall, was a gentleman of ample
but impoverished estates, who by renouncing the
world had come to be pretty generally reputed a
madman. This did not affect him one jot, since he
held precisely the same opinion of his neighbours
—with whom, moreover, he continued on excellent
terms. He kept six saddle horses in a stable large