CHAPTER IV.
_The Bird is Caged_
HITHERTO the Duke of St. James had been a celebrated personage, but his
fame had been confined to the two thousand Brahmins who constitute the
world. His patronage of the Signora extended his celebrity in a manner
which he had not anticipated; and he became also the hero of the ten, or
twelve, or fifteen millions of pariahs for whose existence philosophers
have hitherto failed to adduce a satisfactory cause.
The Duke of St. James was now, in the comprehensive sense of the phrase,
a public character. Some choice spirits took the hint from the public
feeling, and determined to dine on the public curiosity. A Sunday
journal was immediately established. Of this epic our Duke was the hero.
His manners, his sayings, his adventures, regularly regaled, on each
holy day, the Protestant population of this Protestant empire, who in
France or Italy, or even Germany, faint at the sight of a peasantry
testifying their gratitude for a day of rest by a dance or a tune.
'Sketches of the Alhambra,' '_Soupers_ in the Regent's Park,' 'The Court
of the Caliph,' 'The Bird Cage,' &c, &c, &c, were duly announced and
duly devoured.
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