THE BATH ROAD 9 



That so gifted and elegant a ruffian as this should in 

 an age of gaiet}' and fine manners, when morality was 

 never considered, have met his fate by having a cart 

 pulled away from under him, is, to my thinking, a 

 melancholy reflection on the ingratitude of mankind. 

 Why, this was a man after Charles the Second's own heart, 

 and not unlike him, except that he was better looking ! 

 To do the King justice however I think he would have 

 spared the highwayman if he had had his way. It was 

 the judge who presided at the trial who hanged the 

 accomplished Claude ; as it was the judge who with so 

 flagrant a disregard for right feeling interrupted the 

 solemn post-moj'tem celebrations, when the defunct hero 

 lay in state in the " Tangiers Tavern," St. Giles, in a 

 room covered with black cloth, his hearse blazing with 

 escutcheons, eight wax tapers burning, and as many tall 

 gentlemen with black cloaks in attendance. " Mum was 

 the word, as if for fear of disturbing the sleeping lion ; 

 and the night was stormy and rainy, as if the heavens 

 sympathised with the ladies, echoed over their sighs, 

 wept over again their tears." 



I read that as they were undressing him " in order to 

 his lying in state," one of his friends — one of the tall 

 gentlemen in black cloaks, that is to say — in an abstrac- 

 tion natural no doubt to so solemn an occasion, and 

 with a gesture full of melancholy meaning, put his hand 

 in the defunct hero's pocket and produced — not his purse 

 but his Dying Confession. I much regret that I cannot 

 reproduce this elegant effort here. It is written in a 

 blithe spirit of Christian resignation, not unmixed with 

 a stoic's contempt for the pleasures of the life he was 

 leaving. It contains a surprising summary of Duval's 

 good fortunes. But the concluding lines in which he so 

 to speak rounds his philosophy are so truly conceived in 

 the spirit of the Restoration, so faithfully reflect the 

 polished manners of the times, they are quite unfit for 

 publication. 



Duval was buried in the middle aisle of Covent Garden 



