As soon as he got possession of his dead uncle's carriage he took the small liberty of cutting the shop, Spanish liquorice and all, and ventured to change the name of Sam for the more dignified one of Doctor, but it would not pass current everywhere. Many refused to pay a fee, and voted him _ignorantus, ignoranta, ignorantum!_ and so Sam, _à force de battre le fer_, contrived to take out a degree, and became Dr. Merriman indeed, at any lady's service.
"My dear Lady," said the doctor to Amy, in answer to her request for a pair of scissors to cut her own throat, "my dear lady, I should be happy to oblige you, if you could first insure my own neck": and then, turning to the nurse as he warmed his hands by the fire, "I always let them halloa, and make just as much noise as they like; but, for myself, as it will be necessary for me to pass the night here, I shall thank you to give me some warm blankets on that sofa; with a cup of tea and a bottle of wine."
In due season, the gentle Amy was delivered of a fine boy, by my old friend Sam Merriman, and was duly announced to be as well as could be expected. For another fortnight, Amy contrived to keep Argyle in London, as might be supposed to his no small annoyance, just on the eve of his approaching nuptials with Lady Anglesea. The time however did arrive when His Grace took his departure northward, to the destruction of all the airy visions which had long flitted before the anxious eyes of Amy, who had adorned them with ducal coronets and almost every other attribute of a resolutely, ambitious and selfish mind. She declared that her death must be perfectly an event of course; yet she got up in a month, as blooming and well as she had ever been in her life. It is true she worked herself up into a dreadful frenzy of passion, when anybody told her that the Duchess of Argyle was, or would soon be, in the way which all ladies who love their lords wish to be in; but she was easily consoled by adding a few years to Her Grace's age, or detracting from the duchess's charms, personal or mental.
Enough of Amy. I hate to dwell long on any subject, unless indeed it were the merits of these my most interesting and valuable memoirs! which I assure you might have been better still--but that Stockdale won't let me or any one else study and correct them. "The merits of such a light work as this," stupidly says he, "is, that it is written without study, and naturally, and just as you converse. There are learned books enough, and more than people are aware of, all written with such correct precision, as to defy the Edinburgh Reviewers themselves! and yet half of them do not take the trouble, although months have been spent in poring over heavy volumes, to secure the accuracy of a single date! This research is highly creditable in its way; but, since the world, in their rage for variety, require a little of everything, write you in your own natural language, and of life, manners, and men as they strike you, and, take my word for it, your own genuine spirit will please and the book will sell." So here am I, seated on an easy chair at No. 111, in the Rue de Faubourg St. Honoré à Paris, writing, not for the benefit of my readers, but for my own amusement and profit to boot, and in the full expectation that my work is to pass the twentieth edition! Apropos, I have just got a letter from Stockdale, who tells me he has hopes, even beyond what he at first anticipated, as to the success of my Memoirs: but then he consents to observe my directions as to the pretty pictures; which he says shall certainly adorn the work before it gets to the conclusion.